Tale of Princess Kaguya
by Vanto
Summary: (VERY SPOILERS HEAVY) The road to hell is usually paved with good intentions. In the middle of a gigantic war, a princess decide to change the world and become a god by eating the chakra fruit. Follows the story of Kaguya, from her initial quest for the chakra fruit to her eventual battle to death with two future legends. All rights belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
1. Prologue

**TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA.**

Black Zetsu stood there, attached to the corpse of the shinobi who was once his ally.

He had done it, Madara finally managed to complete the Eye Moon plan, even as the entire shinobi alliance kept throwing everything at him. Be it the Gokage, undead Hokages, Jinchuurikis, Sharingans. Everyone stood against him and while the formerly dead leader struggled, a lot, his dream was completed.

The will of Kaguya chuckled. As gigantic trees appeared everywhere to ensnare shinobis, he knew this jutsu, a "God" version of the Genesis of a world of trees, one of the favorites jutsus of the rival of Madara, and it eventually became one of Madara's favorites too when he gained the DNA of the Hokage.

The hideous dark mass wondered if Madara knew that his grip over the planet wasn't complete, as a massive mass of purple chakra stood near him. Team 7 was hiding in there, or at least, the two biggest enemies of the Jinchuuriki of the Juubi were hiding away from the Infinite Tsukuyomi, waiting for the holy light to dissipate before resuming the fight.

None of them, Madara or the team, knew what was coming. And Black Zetsu's grin further expanded as he began a slow walk toward the Susanoo. He couldn't defeat even one member of this team by himself but he knew that the godly manchild would eventually come there, initiating the evil mass's own plan.

These two were the reincarnations of Indra and Asura too, the sons of the legendary Sage of the six paths, and they could dispel the Infinite Tsukuyomi and defeat Madara at the same time. It would be stupid for the mighty Uchiha to leave them be.

Predictably, the third Sage of six Paths crashed on the ground loudly, making a dramatic entrance.

"Leave this to me ! I'm the savior of this world !"

Black Zetsu quietly chuckled at this title. He, himself, used this term to manipulate the reincarnations of Indra, and was pleased to know that it stuck. Madara's ego was enormous after all, he could not imagine that something in this world could even harm him, let alone send him to the underworld a second time. And he was wrong, the living will has seen many battles and therefore knew that as powerful as Madara was, his massive hubris and lack of knowledge would led to his downfall.

And he couldn't let such an occasion pass. He was already frustrated since he was unable to use Obito as a vessel for his mother, letting another go would ruin a plan that was carefully set in place for centuries !

Madara launched a speech, which resumed his deranged views of his own actions quite well. He was thankful that none of them made an offensive move, because he would be unable to approach the mightiest Uchiha otherwise.

His mother would come back, after all these years of waiting, she would finally be able to reclaim the world that belonged to her and rule it as its queen !

The dark hand of the black mass stabbed trough Madara. The Uchiha was tough but his guard was down, enough to be wounded by such a simple attack. The reincarnations of Indra and Asura, and two worms whom he did not care for, were as shocked by the turns of events as Madara who turned around to face Black Zetsu.

He couldn't move and lacked the Truth-Seeking balls to protect him, and none of his Limbo Clones were going to come after the living will. It was much easier than he thought.

Not listening to Madara's ramblings, the dark being started to transmit its will toward the body of the Jinchuuriki, eventually transforming the godly being into some kind of ridiculous balloon for a while.

His mother was going to come back to this rotten world !

She stood in the darkness, not conscious enough to realize the horror of her condition but aware enough to still exist in this plane of existence. She stood in this place since the beginning of the shinobi world, and she was freed when it was about to end. How delightful.

Then, something opened her eyes and she saw the darkness around her. It was as dark as outer space, impossible to see even with her Byakugans. The god stood, in fear, at the idea of being conscious in this eternal darkness.

Then her head was freed, and she moved it around, looking around her made her realize that a light on her left was slowly opening, chasing away the darkness. She let surprise appears on her face at this very moment, wondering what that was.

What is him ?

Her upper body was freed, and she raised her arms. They moved for the first time in eons but she moved them without any troubles, and therefore used them to try to grasp at the light that was illuminating her and freeing the bottom part of her body, as she began to walk toward the light.

The entire "room" was now white, as she started to remember more and more who she was. Her name was Kaguya Ootsutsuki, and she was the former princess of Jakonen, and former goddess of her world.

Memories began to pour into her head, as she remembered names. These names were nonsense to her, at first, but she eventually remembered.

Hagoromo, Hamura, Dashonin, Nanbu, Shinju… She remembered it all, and as she was freed by her third son, she began to remember her life, time seemingly stopping long enough for her to remember it all.

Her story began eons ago in the kingdom of Jakonen, and she was born as a measly princess who would eventually become feared across the world as a true demon, and until two heroes who would later become legends of the shinobi world stopped her, the monster that used to be the person that they cherished the most.

And thus began the tale of princess Kaguya.


	2. Birth

The Kingdom of Dashonin used to be one of the most powerful kingdoms of the entire world, although it was relatively tiny compared to the other Kingdoms such as Omazu, Daishiru or Amena but it was still considered to be technologically superior (not in a sense "It had lasers guns", no. It just had better, more efficient means for agriculture, more refined literature, a better architecture) and so forth to them.

However, the country was even more well-known because it had the famous Ootsutsuki clan as its leader. That was probably the biggest reason the kingdom had any real attraction in its prime. After all, the Ootsutsuki were rather mysterious outside of the kingdom, and therefore gained plenty of rumors about their motives, origins and even a potentially intriguing use of a paranormal energy, mastering such energy source apparently allowed for the clan to manipulate the elements, or manipulate the very source of the universe.

These rumors were non-sense however, most of them anyway. The Ootsutsuki couldn't fly around, reproduce by vomiting an egg or shoot lasers out of their eyeballs but they effectively came from another world altogether, the Moon. For unknown reasons, having come centuries ago but never bothering to explain why in tablets.

Years of breeding with humans, however, slowly resulted in the Ootsutsuki looking less alien over the generations, with the new members of the clan having the usual red-hair and very pale skin, but losing things such as the horns, the gratuitous bone-sprouting technique and third eyes. However, the rest of the world feared them enough for the aliens to peacefully establish a country and make it grow.

However, the kingdom of Dashonin existed in a different continent than the one were, eons later, a young blonde man would change the entire world thanks to his generous actions. And therefore, most ninjas today ignore of is existence, albeit some like Orochimaru or Danzo were interested in it since it housed an alien clan, but according to the few ninjas who went there…

Well, Dashonin and all the others kingdom did not exist anymore, with the former home of the Ootsutsuki being nothing but a vast desert.

The reason such an "opulent" country could become the Sahara began when the king Kyokouei Ootsutsuki and the queen, Tashirana Bazane, finally had a baby. Much to the joy of the palace, and much to the (faked) happiness of the people, who were busy surviving while the elite was busy gossiping in gigantic palaces.

There was a war going on in this continent, a war that begun 345 years ago for unknown reason (people forget over time) and continue to ravage the land. The once prosperous Jinkyi forest of Omazu is not a grey, dull battlefield where young men and their dream come to die. The Shinsi mountains of Daishiru are now death traps, where even the slightest errors can lead to death for an expert and the city of Juganai, of the kingdom of Amena, is now nothing but ruins with the occasional soldier hidden in a rock, ready to stab anything that can move.

The kingdom of Daishonin is the general battlefield for each of the forces. In fact, the kingdom of Daishonin is located at the south, while Omazu is in the east, Daishiru the north and Amena the west, and while the Ootsutsuki's country was the smallest, the other kingdoms used it for the fighting because it was a sure way to reach the other country.

That's why the King of the country, Kyokukei, like all of the kings and queens before him, bowed down to wait. Who was winning the war was variable, sometimes, Amena had the others in the ropes until a sudden counter-attack managed to annihilate the main attack force and force them to retreat, sometimes, they were small periods of peace, but none of the monarchs were naïve enough to enter the war. The nation, while large enough for three armies to slug it out, was tiny and the only reason it wasn't attacked yet was because the others thought it wasn't a danger.

Therefore, the king just sat there in his throne, slipping tea while casually ignoring the screams let out by his wife, who was busy giving birth, hopefully to a boy. After all, only Amena had a female ruler, and it was hard to take women seriously in this war-torn continent. Of course, some refuted these sexists rules and pierced trough, such as the Ootsutsuki queens before, but Kyokukei never took his ancestors into account, usually.

His ears were suddenly pierced by an extremely loud scream, as the king jumped out of his throne out of surprise before turning his attention toward the guards who were, well, doing their job. They stared back at their king, visibly sweating because they caught the monarch's attention and because of the screams.

Kyokukei was already a rather menacing man. Tall and lean, he had shaggy red hair and red bear, the usual pale skin and was constantly dressed in the fanciest clothes that he could find. He also wore a gigantic crown on his head, made of "lunar rock" according to his ancestor.

It was made for the first Ootsutsuki monarch ever, on the moon, and was passed on for generations of leaders. So he tried to keep it on his head and walked toward the room upon hearing a much higher-pitched scream coming from it, and the yells of doctors. He could clearly see that something was horribly wrong about the situation but the only thing that could truly affect him would be the sudden end of the conflict, years of ruling a court made him immune to every depravity that could be thrown at him.

A doctor came out, covered in blood. The King winced at the thought of his stylish coat being coated in blood and stood back, while the man in white merely let out a sigh, seemingly exhausted and sad, tears streamed out of his face as he stared at the king, seemingly about to say something bad.

"Lord Kyokukei… We're sorry to announce that queen Tashirana is dying. The procedure was very exhausting for her after all !"

"Golly. What about the child ?"

The doctor was taken aback for a second but quickly resumed himself. If it wasn't for the man's position and the guard all around, he would've tried to punch the monarch already. The man of science quietly imagined a pink pony running in the champs to calm himself down and spoke back.

"She survived, thankfully."

"She ?"

"Yes. It's a girl !"

The king lets out an obvious expression of anger but said nothing. A queen wasn't so bad after all, people were ready to murder each other just to take care of her and therefore be safe in those big castles, set to protect the royal family if the armies were close, he disliked babies after all. They were loud, had hygiene problems, were stupid and grew up to become rebellious.

A nurse then came out of the door and whispered something to the doctor who coughed.

"The… the queen… died. We're sorry to announce su..;"

"What's your name ?"

Kyokukei pointed toward the nurse, who looked at him for a second with a surprised expression, surprised by the sudden question;

"Akira Domuro. Why ?"

"Congratulations. You're my new queen. GUARDS !"

Guards popped out.

"Take her to her new chambers. If I see something that belonged to the former queen when I come back you'll be sent to guard the front."

They gasped and took the stunned nurse to her new chambers. The doctor gasped : he was about to propose to the nurse shortly after the childbirth !

Meanwhile, the king pushed the doctor and entered the room, there was blood everywhere and he therefore took out an handkerchief to hopefully clean up the air around him, seeing the corpse of the woman he loved seemingly never had much of an effect on him.

"Sir…"

"I'm being all torn up inside. Now, let me see the goddamn baby."

One of the doctors hesitated and gave the small baby girl to the king who took her in his arms in a surprisingly gentle manner for such a man.

"Do you have any ideas about her name ?"

"Masashi ?"

"Anko ?"

"Kurenai ?"

"Rin ?"

The king flipped off the doctors, and quietly thought about sending the guards to them. Meanwhile, a guard stepped up and, noticing the small baby, responded quickly.

"Kaguya ?"

The king turned his head toward the guard, like everyone in the room. He was the dangerous man with a giant axe and a metal protection, completed with an oni mask, but the unfortunate guard still felt intimidated.

"Like. The bamboo cutter tale, who come from the moon."

"You mean. It's a supposedly clever twist on the fact that my people come from the moon ?"

"Yes sir !"

"Well. It works, so you're promoted ! And you also get to take care of her."

He handed Kaguya to the guard, who tried to take the baby in his arms in a shaky manner as the King left to resume his usual activity.

"Whoah ! Never thought this crap would work !" said the guard as he handed the baby to one of the doctors.


	3. Meeting

-Someday, in the era that saw the creation of the hidden leaf…-

The Kokuni forest was naturally silent at night.

Located somewhere in the land of fire, and previously one of the most dangerous place of the continent because of all the hidden Uchihas and Senjus on it, the whole place grew to become less of a death-trap after the end of the conflict and more of a more "plain boring" forest.

Of course, people liked it that way, since they could now peacefully travel without some emo ninja slicing their throat or seeing a bunch of nature-lovers ganging up on them. Therefore, it was now commonly used for fancy promenades and other activities, with a large part of the Kokuni forest being still full of traps waiting for an innocent bystander to come in.

But these traps weren't a danger for the man who was currently walking in the woods, his trip was rather easy, since the night time meant that fewer people would get in his way today. Killing anything else than some of the most powerful Senju wasn't troublesome at all for him, and he certainly wouldn't have nightmares over it, but he wanted to be at peace.

The man was however, recognizable thanks to his long, barbarian hairs, his black (or rather purple-ish) robe imprinted with the symbol of a red and white fan, the massive gunbai that he wielded and, naturally, his eyes, which the moon conveniently shone upon.

Madara Uchiha.

However, the man wasn't here to defy his rival and destroy the Leaf. Not yet, he had to put his bloodlust (and need to have a good fight) aside for this night, he was instead searching for the mighty power of the Kyuubi, which could give him a radical edge for the future fight against Hashirama, plotting to finally defeat his former friend and burn down the place that he once called his "dream."

Of course, his plan was more complex than a mere "destroy everything" operation but his goal here was to find the Nine-Tails, an easy task since the beast was a giant even amongst the behemoths called "tailed beasts", subdue it, which would be obviously an easy task for him, and attempts to attack the hidden leaf with him.

However, the mightiest of all Uchihas saw something in the corner of his eye. While he could activate his sharingan and keep it activated for weeks thanks to his massive chakra reserves, the patriarch chose not to use it for such a simple "task" (walking trough the woods was something that everybody, ninja or civilian, could accomplish), and thus, identifying the shadow was out of his reach with normal eyes.

After activating the mighty dojutsu however, Madara could clearly see that _something_ was lurking around here, and seemingly fleeing. Quickly identifying the fleeing stalker as an unknown entity, the Uchiha gave chase. He was doing it slowly though, not wishing to spoil some fun while it appeared.

Despite his slowed down movements and lack of any real motivation, the mighty Uchiha was still slowly catching up without any efforts, while the other "attacker" was seemingly using all its might to keep some distance between it and the Uchiha man, although he seemingly headed for a cul-de-sac.

"You seems to lack intelligence, beast. Trying to hunt me shall be the last mistake of your life."

Arms folded, the demigod kept following until the dark thing just… escaped. As if, it vanished when it came in contact with a gigantic boulder, which was seemingly guarding something in the rock. Madara merely groaned at the sight of the rock. While it could impress a weak ninja or a civilian, it would take something much greater to even stop him for a few seconds.

Madara's massive gunbai, which took the live of more than an hundred of senjus, had no problems demolishing the structure, opening the way for the transmigration of Indra who saw nothing but a single, mostly empty cave, and that small thing that the cave had was enough to catch his attention.

Inside of the cave, there was a tablet, while it did not interest Madara at first, he soon had to take a lengthier look at it when he realized that it was quite similar to the one in the Naka Shrine, with his Eternal Mangeykyo detecting the usual symbols associated with the legendary sage of six paths.

While he kept his guard up, afraid of being stabbed from behind by the black being (which was a ridiculous scenario), the ancestor of Sasuke began to read the tablets with his dojutsu after approaching. While the normal human eye could not read this tablet, the sharingan could pick it up, although comprehending it was painful, with the unfortunate Uchiha basically reading gibberish with a few understandable words there and there.

His eternal eyes had no such problems though, and while some parts still came off as insane gibberish, he could easily read whatever that was.

It spoke about the Shinju.

-Kingdom of Daishonin, a millennia ago-

The small, and thus very agile and nimble Kaguya ran in the hallways of the castle, dodging various ministers, counsellors or servants in a surprisingly effective way, even if her movements were rather clumsy, as excepted of a small child.

She lacked the horns, additional eyes and other features which she would eventually gain over the years but she still had a very pale skin and red hairs, even if her facial features were otherwise normal. The 3-years old turned her head toward the hallways and saw her "nanny", a middle-aged woman, rushing to grab her.

Giggling, the little girl kept running in the hallways, it seems that she was being pursued because she rolled herself onto some dirt earlier, which pretty much sucked for everyone in the castle because Jin Korikame was going to visit it, and Kaguya needed to be there as a princess, even if she would say nothing.

"Princess Kaguya !" yelled the woman for the 67th time, with her only response being a taunting grimace from the young child, who turned her attention toward her care-taker long enough to kept running toward a cul-de-sac, realizing it only after she met the wall head on.

Yelling the name of the future queen a second time, the servant quickly took her in her arms. Partly because she needed some comfort and partly because she did not want for Kaguya to escape her grasp a second time, even if the princess suddenly calmed herself all of a sudden upon seeing outside of the window.

Sighing, Bashin Amizaku calmed down. As a servant, she knew that she needed to go easy on the young princess, not because her father would kill the care-taker (he was never there for her in fact, or at least, not enough) if she somehow made the young Ootsutsuki upset, but simply because princess Kaguya knew how to scream in a way that would make a famous yellow-haired warrior from another series proud.

"Wut's dis ?"

Kaguya pointed toward the horizon, or rather, the massive tree which towered over the continent. Not even the Kalakai mountains could compare to the Shinju in height, if someone managed to reach the top of it, they could see the other continents beyond the sea, from what people said.

"It's the Shinju Tree. Princess."

"Wut's a sheenjue ?"

Everybody had such a question in mind. Truth to be told, no one knew what the holy tree really was. From what travellers says, there wasn't any others structures like this outside of the continent, and people were rather suspicious of the theory of a good soil being the reason behind the height and mass of the god tree.

The following words are what Madara will read, although in a more formal, mature tone;

"Well. Some said that the Shinju isn't a giant tree at all. It's, in the fact, the god of our world, and he feel asleep after creating it. One could awake it by eating the chakra fruit that bloom once in a millennium."

She knew the princess well enough to continue, since a question about the chakra fruit would come soon enough. She began to walk toward the room of the princess, so that she could put in a fresh kimono and the crown.

"It's a fruit that give you fantastic powers if you eat it. However, there's a taboo on it since the god tree is a sacred place, and it's impossible to climb on it. And even if you do, the teeth of the person who try to eat it for a bad reason will rot before he can proceeds."

"How does it taste ?"

"No one knows."

She playfully stroked the top of Kaguya's head, with the princess just calmly looking at her, or at least, she puffed her cheeks and looked at her servant with a "give me moar answers" look. However, Bashin just smiled and just proceeded to give the crown to a now clean Kaguya, it wasn't the King's own but it still looked pretty "royal" and stuff, with jewels embedded in it. It, otherwise, looked like a stereotypical silver crown, small enough to fit on the small head of the future rabbit demon but large enough to look oversized.

"Wut am aie supposed tto do ?"

"You'll just need to be there and watch dear, do not be intimidated."

She lifted the princess up and walked to the throne room, while the Ootsutsuki princess put her thumbs in her mouth, occasionally staring at guards or waiters. The hallways of the castle were decorated with the portraits of former monarchs of the country, all of whom were painted at knight with the moon in view. The difference between each generation was clear, with the father of Kyokukei looking like a normal human (albeit with small horns and silver skin) and his great-great- grandfather having spikes everywhere on his face, a third eye on his throat and razor-sharps teeth, with an "darker" grey skin.

They finally came to the throne room, with Kyokukei talking to a random guard. The throne of the king was the tallest, fancier and larger of them all, catching the attention of anyone in the room. The throne of the queen, Takane Hokuzo, was smaller and rounder, albeit still royal-looking, and Kaguya's throne was a small, almost normal chair.

The king's own royal chair was also golden, with several red jewels embedded on it while the other two were blue and had some white dots on it. The queen, meanwhile, looked at Kaguya with a warm smile as the princess sat on her throne, between her father and "mother"'s.

Quietly taking some steps back (albeit she was still nearby), everyone in the room progressively got quieter as the large doors opened, to reveal the famous Jin Korikame, king of one of the warring kingdoms, and occasional bamboo cutter.

He looked as fancy as his host, with a green suit of armor (with some red motifs there and there), a red cape (he wanted to came in with his white cape but it got caught in a door when he was leaving and ripped off, which meant that he had to choose a red one), a sheath holding a massive-to-the-point-that-it-compensate-for-something sword (he was having trouble walking because of it), and an haughty air, with a fantastic goatee to match.

He bowed down and stood up as quick as lighting, disliking the idea of looking inferior to someone, and looked at the royal family.

"It is an honor to meet you, lord Tenzen."

"My name is Kyokukei."

"Shit."

He looked at one of his counsellors, blaming his typo on him and turned back with a cool smile, putting the epic fail behind him.

"So. I came here to request your help for the war with Amena. You see, they've been overwhelming us for quite a while now, and while our elites are holding up enough to buy time, we cannot hope to take back our lost territory. Surely, an army could come here and invade their territory, forcing them to retreat !"

The king of Daishonin gritted his teeth. Last week, he received the queen of Amena, who said that she could use some help to crush Daishiru, and the king of Gozen recently came here too to propose an alliance, none of the monarchs knew of the deal.

"Amena has the strongest army for now. What happen if the attack fail ? They'll have no problems attacking the both of us while we're recoiling."

"Do not worry. They're too cowardly to handle two countries at once !"

"They've been handling you and Gozen for hundred of years, and our army is weak."

"Well, man up !"

Jin turned back and left, frustrated.

"If we manage to somehow reverse the situation, your kingdom will have to fear for its safety !"

He tripped on his cape, got up and spat on his counsellor before exiting the castle, followed closely by his confused guards and a disgusted counsellor.

"Good god. Have you seen how I've handled that dude ?"

"He just declared that he was going to attack us ! While over half of the country is being used as a battlefield ! Our army isn't large or trained enough to fight them !"

"It will, since I'm about to use our manpower to form a vast elite !"

"Even if all the men and women in the kingdom became soldiers, we would have less manpower than them !"

"Maybe we could use the chakra fruit ?"

The king looked at Kaguya and laughed, but not the "haha, that was a good joke" kind of laughter but the "you said an atrocious bullshit and you'll be forever an idiot in my eyes" variant. The Ootsutsuki princess looked on, confused and hurt.

"Haha ! Who are you anyways, little one ? Get out of the seat !"

"That's our daughter !"

"Ho crap."

Some servants leaped in and took her away while queen and king were going to duke it out, she never saw her parents for the rest of the day, ate in her own room and slept while various bodyguards were guarding the door or windows, she slept after 4 hours, thinking about the chakra fruit.

And she did well, because she'll really need the fruit some years in the future, where Amena ragequitted because of the resistance, allowing for Jin's kingdom to leer at Daishonin.

Just to clear it up, Madara read about the Shinju's origins, the kingdoms and what will happens to Daishonin (it ain't pretty), instead of reading about the meeting or stuff.

I put such passages to offer some "side-story", the story is also a bit of an AU.

As always, leave reviews ;)


	4. Queen

The sun was shining bright in the sky, without a single cloud to mask it. The day was delightfully beautiful, enough for some peasants to pop their heads out of their houses and come out of their hiding.

Ever since the king acted like a complete douchebag toward one of the highest-ranking generals of one of the warring kingdom, the quiet little country of Daishonin lived in fear, they all knew that they were weak, with an army that wouldn't stop the other kingdoms from wiping out the Ootsutsuki's country, even if said army was still strong enough to restrain peasants from leaving the country.

Kyokukei really wanted for every man to be a soldier, and for every woman, children or eldery to build weapons and prepare rations for the soldier, while it was employed by the other countries, a certain sense of panic and lack of intelligent communication by the king meant that it ended with many confused young soldiers having a 2-day training and then being sent off to guard the kingdom or the palace if they were lucky.

As for the weapons and food, it was there but the production was often quickened, so the weapons, while more than capable of killing a human being, would often break apart when struck by the blade of the enemy soldiers.

Needless to say, most of the villages were living near the castle and tried to get the protection of the royal family, to no avail.

Therefore, only a few of the unfortunate peasants were able to come out and see the small unit that was heading for them. There was 30 soldiers at least, all of whom had a perfectly clean and ready-to-take-hits armor, with weapons and confidence in themselves, they were also mounted on horses and carried a weapon hidden in some sheets, standing on a rather large wood platform on wheels, carried by the horses.

Meanwhile, the Daishonin soldiers who came here to fight them had dented armors because of the hasty work of the kingdom, weapons that simply asked to be broken at the first clash, were visibly sweating in fear and were on foot, with the leader sitting on a tiny pink donkey. They, for an unknown reason, looked somewhat wary as the leader of the enemy unit approached.

The man looked like Ginkaku or Kinkaku, even if he wasn't affiliated with them. However, he looked much more "dignified" than them, with a confident walk and a golden armor, even if he looked ridiculous thanks to his rather goofy design. The soldiers knew better than to laugh at him, however, he was the man who managed to push Amena back while making several plans to attack the other countries.

The man was so influent in the government, he could murder a man and steal his wife right in front of a crowd in the capital of Daishiru, Gozen, and still be respected as an hero. His name, Ryojiki Gurmanchi, was presumably one of the fastest ways to make the generals of the other nations flee in fear. His involvement in the invasion was mainly because spies saw that the Ootsutsuki weren't prepared at all.

And the invasion needed to be carried quickly, so that's why they gave to him the new top-weapon (sic, as said by the king of the country) of the nation. A cannon with enough power to vaporize the castles of the royal family, wipe out their army in one blow and ravage their land to the point that no civilization will exist on it for the next eons to come !

Ryojiki chuckled and patted the weapon, in a way that could earn quite a few chuckles given the number of "size jokes" possible, while two soldiers of the unit were spraying the blood of soldiers and civilians everywhere, the weapons of the Daishonin soldiers breaking upon contact with the armor along with the horrible difference in experience between the soldiers.

Soon, the village became a massive grave, with people running for their lives, be it the surviving soldiers or the civilians. The soldier spared the young or the women but only to bring them back home to have them work for weapons, since unlike Daishonin, the invading country could afford some time. Soon, the village was now nothing but a burning grave, while the general chuckled.

"Sir. I do believe that could've joined us without problems. These soldiers could've been used as fodder or trained further !"

"Come on, Nabuza. This country is nothing but a relic, ruled by the last degenerative members of a bunch of freaks, do you think we're here to bring tea, peace and books to some amateurs ? If I'm going to invade a weak country, I want to enjoy it."

He steps up, raising his arms while staring at the castle far ahead.

"Let us enjoy the bloodshed ! We shall drink their… ow !"

Accidentally, the wheel of the platform rolled on his foot. The general jumped back, clutching his foot while repeatedly swearing in a way that greatly contrasted with his maniacal behavior displayed earlier. He awkwardly pointed toward the castle and hopped towards it along with the other soldiers.

Meanwhile, a single, lone figure was spying at them. One couldn't make out who it was at all, because of the dark blue outfit that covered every part of the body, the gloves, the shoes and a mask tat would hide all but the eyes, it was a ninja, albeit a classic one, the kind that isn't orange with clones everywhere.

"Humph"

The ninja vanished thanks to its high-speed;

The castle wasn't worried about the whole problem, or rather, they were trying to hide their panic by making grand declarations, raising the few victories against a bunch of confused, sleeping enemies and letting some people enter.

Since it all took places several years after the accident, Kaguya was now an adolescent, and her features were therefore more like the one that shall be feared as a demon, horns, sharinnegan and others withstanding. Her face was still much more innocent, with large, grey eyes and the usual red hair and pale skin, therefore, she had enough wedding proposals for her mother to assign bodyguards to her, mostly because of assassins but also thanks to the creepy behavior of some of the men who turned around her "daughter".

So, Kaguya was now peacefully sitting in a table, not eating with her parents as always, as food was given on a plate to her. The princess therefore took a fork, gazing at all the delicious things in front of her with her usual giddy smile, until a large, burly hand made a sign to stop her.

"Princess Kaguya. You do know that a traitor could easily poison your dinner ? Let us taste to check."

The young woman quietly observed them. The dude who spoke was Tonpo Kaguchi, the largest and strongest of the bodyguard. The other was a young man named Tenchiro Kuzuma, much slimmer but as deadly as Tonpo thanks to his weapon, the third was Mina Kara, much more deadly than her petite physique indicate and the fourth was Mikazuchi Daraoa, who was a weapon expert too.

"NAH !"

Kaguya ate some meat, much to the horror of her bodyguards, and stood there, smiling quietly, at least until the pain stomach started, her white skin slowly turning blue as she got up, both hands on her throat, at least until she fell to the ground, landing on her back and coughing.

"PRINCESS KAGUYA !"

They all piled up on her to try to help her up, seemingly succeeding after a while since her color became white-ish again, even if she seemed to be strangely at the verge of dying because of the food, so she just raised her hand.

"Tell… to my mom… that I died without any kind of… relation."

"STAY WITH US PRINCESS KAGUYA !"

"THE LIGHT IS BAD !"

She dropped dead for a few seconds but suddenly got up, laughing loudly (to the point of snorting) to the face of her bodyguards who went white with shock for a while, until they regained their senses enough to facepalm at their collective panic, Tenchiro helped up Kaguya, who gazed into his eyes for a while before going back to Tanpo's lectures.

"Princess. One day, you might fall sick and might really face such a scenario without you believing us ! Please, avoid making such scenes !"

"Ho, it was just a small harmless joke !"

Kaguya folded her arms, pouting for a while until Tanpo just gave up and sighed, the usual poison-check procedure was launched and Kaguya quietly ate until some dude in a monk robe arrived.

"Princess Kaguya ! Your father want to see you !"

"Ho ?"

She puts a finger on her lips, seemingly curious.

"Why ?"

"Just follow me !"

The bodyguards stepped up, wary about the mysterious monks, and collectively sighed when Kaguya started to run after him, they could all see that some objects such as paintings, tables or other things like dat where taken away by some servants, much to the ignorance of the princess who followed for some minute until they came out of the castle and arrived at the beach that was behind it.

Many boats were currently near the beach, belonging to the Ootsutsuki. Kaguya kept running however, and finally ended up facing her father who was busy discussing schemes with a bunch of soldiers, and somehow panicked upon seeing her and the bodyguards.

"What's the meaning of this, daddy ?!"

"Huh… hello there ! I has, huh, great news for you !"

The queen arrived and ran up to Kaguya's side, confused.

"What's happening Kyokukei ?"

"Well… Kaguya, you're the new queen ! And Takane, screw you, you're a servant now."

"W-"

He handed to Kaguya his crown, although she barely had time to register the placement of the important relic on her head. She instead feel somewhat… betrayed ?

"Where are you going Father ?! I'm… I'm not fit for such a task !"

"I'm going to an island to, well, direct my new micro-state. I mean, Daishonin is important and stuff, and I must understand that I'm not fit to rule it, so… well, the kingdom of Darjobu is born !"

"You're fleeing when your country needs you !"

The Ootsutsuki hesitated.

"Well, I'll bring supports to you, m'eukay ? The reason I must flee if because our soldiers were incompetents after all, right ?"

"No ! You brought that on yourself !"

The king waited for the main ship to be loaded before kicking sand up the eyes of everyone and boarding the ship, which began to sail away as the queen and the bodyguard were busy launching insults toward the cowardly king, while Kaguya stood there.

Soon, the micro armada became nothing more than a point in the horizon while the queen slowly approached an immobile Kaguya, noticing that the princess was somewhat crying, probably because she thought about the war and the betrayal of her father. Having no choice, the former queen merely hugged her "daughter" tight, noticing that everyone who hasn't left was staring at them.

It continued for a while until Kaguya began to turn toward them.

"F-fine. We should let the villagers enter the castle first !"

"Huh. No queen Kaguya. We, hum, sorta have to avoid doing that. We lacks the necessary food for such an occupation, and they're… dirty."

She turned toward the protester.

"Let them in, please… I mean, there are plenty of villages who suffer from the enemy so… let's protect them."

The whole thing made little sense but she was irrational and the others were afraid of the whole "execution" thingy so they set out to open the door as a whole slew of pleading villagers suddenly found themselves running into the castle, with the guards being forced to menace them with weapons to avoid some foot shortage.

Meanwhile, Kaguya herself was in the throne room, reading a book. Her bodyguards stood there, as he raised her head.

"I should find myself a king."

She thought that having a companion would be useful for the long road that was waiting ahead, and turned toward her bodyguard group before being interrupted by her "mother", who entered the room in a panic with a counselor at her side.

"Queen Kaguya !" yelled the counselor. "Akosen was destroyed by a squad of enemy soldier recently, we've been informed by some survivors !"

Kaguya froze up. Akosen was perhaps one of the closest villages to the castle, which meant that the enemy was really, really nearby. The queen started to hyper-ventilate a bit, but calmed herself down quickly.

"Well, we'll just have to send a platoon of soldiers to deal with them, right ?"

"Our soldiers are… weak."

Kaguya frowned and facepalmed, afraid and confused. The events just happened so quickly... but she will pull trough and save her people from the horrible fate that awaits them !

And then, a gigantic explosion destroyed the door of the castles.


	5. Fleeing

The hand of the general was raised as he used some primitive binoculars to looks at the crumbling castle, or rather, the damage inflict upon it, while the cannon had smoke surrounding it because of the violence of the shot, while the soldiers nearby were busy clutching their ears, the noise was really, really strong, as if some kind of ancient beast was roaring right in their ear.

Ryojiki Gurmanchi smiled in a sadistic way when he saw that the wall that was hit was completely destroyed, while its surroundings were now covered in flames and corpses of guards and civilians. He loved it when he had the bigger stick, it felt quite good to watch the terrors in the face of the survivors as they search for the weapon, hoping to know what killed them at least, presumably.

He threw the binoculars to a random soldier and made hand-gestures, as sixteen soldiers leaped with their horses towards the castle, escaping the tiny forest they were hiding it, as he rudely took the binoculars again to look at the future conflict between his trained, armed men and some pussies hiding in an armored coffin.

The castle was obviously filled with panicking people of course, all of whom were now trying to survive, guards included. Some were using crates in an attempt to hide, ignoring the fact that the firepower of the cannon would easily kill him with or without crates (or perhaps denying it), others were coming out of the hole caused by the attack to run and finally, some were poking objects everywhere to find a secret exit.

Therefore, the riders were in for an easy win, easily overwhelming the entire population of the castle as they slain civilians, guards or servants, slashing their throat, stabbing them, decapitating them or trampling on them with the horses, anything was good for the veterans of the war, much to the general's delight who started to jump around while making slashing motion with his free hand.

"CLUTCH ! CLUTCH ! CCLLLUUUUTTTCCCHHHH !"

At least 4 guards could react in time. And a muscular, seemingly stronger than average Daishonin soldier leaped to stab one of the invaders in the throat with his spear, before smashing another one in the face by throwing the body of the dead soldier at him.

Two others also ganged up on an attacking soldier to stab him and the horse with blades, successfully killing him until the large blade of another sealed both their fates by swiftly cutting their head, with the murdered being ultimately impaled in the face by one of the last guards, who was swiftly killed by one invader who blindsided him.

Now alone, the last guard took out his sword and made one another victim by throwing the spear at him and slashing two other soldiers, until he was repeatedly stabbed at by the rest of the soldiers, although he killed yet another one by throwing his sword at the face of the first guy who attacked him, before dying.

"What the hell was wrong with them ?" said one of the soldiers, watching the corpses of his comrade, amongst those of his victims.

"Probably elite guard, but who care ? We can kill the Ootsutsuki king right now !"

They looked at the small part of the castle where the king reside, ignoring that the coward fled long ago, and watched with a frown when a cannonball managed to hit it.

"I really wanted to murder the hell out of this dude."

The throne room was shaking, as each of its occupants tried to find a way to maintain themselves, with various degrees of success. Kaguya herself was shaking on her throne, looking around in frantic panic as her mother tried to get close to her, in an attempt to shield her "daughter" with her body and reassure her, even if the bodyguards leaped in to take the queen by the arm and yank her out of the throne.

"Queen Kaguya ! We must go !"

The future rabbit said nothing and just griped the arm of Tenchiro, looking around again as the crown fell from her head and shattered, which was ignored by everyone in the room, as Mikazuchi leaped to punch the face of a statue of the former king, much to the surprise of Mina who was too busy holding Kaguya to intervene.

"There's a button Mikazuchi, you can activate it by just opening the face with a push to the chest."

"Whatever ! the palace is crumbling !"

In fact, the statue of the king was never used in the "correct way", people punched it in the face all day to activate the hidden trap, when the tyrant wasn't watching. Having an occasion to punch that smug face was something that few people had in their lives, after all, and since the king was the reason this all happened, punching even a replica of him was a good way to calm one's nerves.

However, the exit opened rather slowly and rocks started to fall upon the room, although the bodyguards tried to keep their calm and open the exit in a quicker way, cursing the designer at the same moment, before turning their heads toward Kaguya, who just let out a rather loud scream.

A medium-sized back fell on her back, fortunately not breaking it by some miracle but clearly hurting the Ootsutsuki queen who nearly dropped to her knees, only standing thanks to her bodyguards, who notice that she'll need some medical help really fast ! Therefore, Tonpo opened the passage by himself and everyone in the room went in the secret passage.

The former queen was running near her daughter, who nearly passed out because of the pain, and tried to help with some words, which clearly did not succeeds since the future rabbit demon went trough phases of being somewhat conscious and trying to look around, before going back to being unconscious, sweating profusely all the while and spouting out incoherent babblings.

The tunnel, leading underground, finally led to a forest, although it wasn't the one where the cannon was. They could still clearly see what was happening to castle, and therefore see that the part of it that wasn't gone because of the collapse was destroyed by the fire, with the general of the invading army gleefully riding the cannon as the captured members of the castle were executed at random by the soldiers.

"No…"

The queen started to somewhat cry, seeing the castle as her (former) new home and turned toward an unconscious Kaguya, gently stroking the head of her false daughter who was unconscious, as the bodyguards were standing there, too shocked by the fall of the castle to speak something that would look dignified or coherent. Instead, they looked at each other.

They all looked utterly defeated, despaired and confused. The sudden fall of the castle, the depart of the king and Kaguya's wounds were hitting them harder than they thought, and they had to pull themselves together by thinking about the problem of the princess.

Daishonin was gone, defeated, and the other nations were going to fight for this tiny piece of land, Kaguya was wounded, the waste of a king was gone and the war had something else to rage on for years, thought the bodyguards as they headed to hide in the forest.

Needless to say, the ambiance was a wee bit depressing until the youngest of them raised her hand.

"Hey ! That's the Konibi village !"

They looked at the alert village in the distance, with people gathered at some high spot to see what the hell was going to happen and crying at the destruction of the castle, and potential risk of the war becoming even more barbaric. However, Mina did not drop her smile as Mikzauchi groaned and picked up the princess, who was spouting out lines about hair drying.

"I has a family there ! Maybe we can hide the princess !"

"Quiet !"

Mina calmed down at Mikazuchi's orders, as the large bodyguard, while walking toward the house, raised his voice a bit to give his opinion on the very convenient fact that the family of one of the bodyguard was there.

"Listen. Maybe some soldiers are waiting to murder the hell out of this village ? And maybe that someone will spot the princess and deliver information to the invaders to receive money and be spared ? And maybe that your family isn't there, or fled because of the war ? If we do knock on this door, and like, your mother opens, I swear to god that I will…"

The mother of Mina opened the door, having seemingly just woke up because of the pockets under her eyes, and promptly hugged her daughter upon realizing her identity, probably a bit to the despair of Mikazuchi who rolled her eyes upwards as an reaction.

"Sorry miss, but we have to enter. Our… friend there is wounded and we'll need medical help."

"Well, who is this friend my DEAR GOD !"

The queen popping out and the discovery that the "friend" was the princess was enough to make the mother froze for a moment, at least until she made some moves to indicate that they could enter, and closed the door when everyone was there, letting "calm" fall once again on the village.

Temporarily at least, since tomorrow shall be a "great" day.


	6. Reality

It was a bright, welcoming day.

The young queen woke up in a bed, covered in sweats and dressed in the attire she wore before the accident even happened in the first place, one could see that they were still tattered and bloody because of the rock wound from earlier but Kaguya did not paid any attention, the pain was gone.

The room was beautiful, with portraits of the Ootsutsuki leaders, tables full of rare items from the other continents and the usual thingies, such as a red carpet, a large, comfy bed and other rich elements, it was somehow even nicer than the room she slept on back in the castle, in fact, even the King's own room was less comfy than that.

A large window dominated the room, allowing for the sun to shine trough, bathing the young woman in light. The queen groaned and went back to her bed, she was confused about what the hell happened but the bed offered some much-needed comfort for her back, after enduring a rock to the back at least.

She on the bed, resting a bit more as she looked around. Last she saw, the castle was attacked… were the invaders fought off ? She dared to look at the windows and saw a beautiful city outside, large enough to house an entire kingdom but from what she was seeing trough the windows, the habitants were happy and cheerful toward each other, which was already unrealistic since they were normally stressed about the war.

Getting up, she saw that she wasn't covered in sweat anymore, and even had a long, rather fancy white kimono bearing the mark of the Ootsutsuki clan, alongside plenty of tomoe at the sleeves, the collar and the back, from what she was seeing thanks to a mirror.

She already knew what the situation was, but still turned her attention toward the door of her room, hearing footsteps. She knew that whatever was going to come wasn't hostile, and since a smiling Tenshiro was the one who opened the door with a large, goofy face instead of his usual calm expression, Kaguya mentally congratulated himself while her "bodyguard" walked toward the Queen.

He then proceeded to hold her hands, his facial expression indicating that he was presumably too love-struck at the moment to say anything. She held the image in her head, knowing that she'll presumably rarely see such an expression on the face of the bodyguard.

He opened his mouth to say something but seemingly didn't, choosing his words, as Kaguya stared at him with a simple smile. He aged a bit, with his shaggy brown hairs being longer, having a bit of a goatee now and his green eyes were focused on hers, he also had the same fancy clothes at her with a crown, unlike his usual brown steel armor.

"Ready for the speech, my queen ?"

Somehow, she could recognize what the hell he was talking about and nodded. The entire world was unified under her rule, and the new kingdom of Daishonin was at its prime, and said prime would last for the eons to come ! She had to make a speech because the last continent was peacefully seized, like all others, with the "conquered" nations keeping their values, gods and others values.

"Why, of course my king !"

She walked out of the room while holding his hand, walking in the halls of the castle, all of whom had golden walls and roof with a splendid red carpet. She, strangely, felt no fear as she walked toward the large balcony where she would eventually deliver her speech to the population of the entire city and more ! Mostly because of her warm hand of her husband, and because she saw some "special guest."

The entire Ootsutsuki clan was there, with Hagoromo and Hamura dressed in the same suits as their mother and father, the mysterious spiral-like eyes of the younger son were glowing as he clapped, as Hamura, the elder brother with his blank-eyes, was also clapping, trying to make it harder than Hagoromo's.

Chuckling, Kaguya took the time to watch as the Rinnegan-wielder realized that his brother was trying to upstage him and engaged in the competition, other Ootsutsuki members were also there and clapping, smiling warmly as their horns mutated in joy ! Kaguya only felt a strange pain in her head for a moment but she realized that it was simply the horns doing their jobs.

She finally arrived on the balcony, followed by the two sages and her husband, and looked at the cheering crowd, with all these festivities ! She felt an undying love for the world at this moment, for everything which inhabited it, be it the lowest plankton or the deadliest predator, and started to cry, grabbing Tenshiro, her two dojutsu-using sons, her mother and some Ootsutsuki clan members as tear flowed from all of her eyes, the one on her forehead included.

"Thank you Tenshiro ! Thank you Hagoromo ! Thank you Hamura !"

She kept crying and felt the reassuring hugs of her family, and smiled while closing her eyes, kissing her husband on the lips one last time as she calmed down and turned toward the masses, thanking each of them too. She did not know their names but each of the anonymous persons present there were friends for her.

And finally, she turned toward the blooming Shinju, after many years, it had transformed into a large great tree, housing many new species and even some humans, she knew that the great tree had no true conscience to speak of but she still took a look at it. After all, being a part of this planet, she loved it too and felt grateful for the creation of the fruit.

However, she was a tad surprised when it turned into a gigantic deformed humanoid thing with ten tails, which then proceeded to make its way toward her with impunity as everyone watched, seemingly not afraid of it. Even Kaguya thought that it was normal after a while, in fact, the creature had a "familiar" feeling, she couldn't quite pinpoint it but she felt strangely calm, even if the towering beast's head was as big as the castle, and did not panic when its massive teeth were only inch away from her head.

Then, the beast started to murmur seven dirty words to Kaguya's ear before handing her a handkerchief large enough to cover the city and the castle, before speaking in a much more human voice.

"QUEEN KAGUYA !"

The queen opened her eyes, and saw that she was actually in a room, although this one was much more, hum, "low-grade" than the previous one. The room was pretty tiny, dark, and her torn clothes were installed somewhere on a chair, she grimaced when she saw the blood on it.

"Thanks god, you're awake ! I was so worried about you !"

Hug ensue. Kaguya merely looked confused for a moment as she grabbed the hand of Tenshiro, with her usual smile on her face.

"How are you, my king ?"

"Queen Kaguya ?"

She jumped back, blushing. She KNEW that the Tenshiro of her dreams wasn't there but she still did that ! If only because the dream was much, much sweeter than the reality : her father was gone, the castle was being destroyed and the people she grew up with were now dead or captured, needless to say, the bliss she felt was soon dispelled, as she saw that she was thankfully wearing a dirty kimono.

"I'll warn the others. Stay here, okay ?"

"Wa-"

She rose to follow him but she soon screamed, holding her back as she fell back to her bed, hardly breathing as the pain overtook her body. She felt as if someone was repeatedly stabbing her back with a dagger, and she could only start to cry as a panicked Tenshiro ran next to her, unsure about what to do.

"Calm down Kaguya ! Please ! I beg of you ! Calm down !"

Kaguya, who was nearly having a seizure, fought a bit and then took back her usual posture, although tears were flowing down from her eyes. Tenshiro hugged her for a moment, being worried for the safety of the queen (and for more personal reasons) until the bodyguards and inhabitants entered, and froze upon seeing them.

"Sorry, wrong time ?"

"Nope !"

Kaguya and Tenshiro awkwardly broke up as he joined the bodyguards, Kaguya herself sat down for some pep talk.

"Are you alright princess ?"

"More or less."

Tenpo sighed as Mikazuchi went ahead.

"Okay, queen Kaguya. We must inform you that Daishonin is more or less no more. We're… sorry to spit it out to you but now, the entire country is filled to the brim with soldiers of other nations, we've got to flee to another continent or they'll catch you and kill you."

Mina looked at Kaguya, who was on the verge of tear, and promptly gave a cupcake to her, her large, innocents blue eyes fixated on the queen's gray, as she stood back, her wavy blond hair were dishevelled because of all the tension but she did not care.

Tenpo scratched his bald head for a moment, as the Ootsutsuki heir watched the cupcake with a mixture of sadness and confusion, the youngest bodyguard made a move to take the cupcake back but Mikazuchi hold out an arm, her thick Rock-Lee like eyebrows, which gave her a permanent frown and weren't masked by her short hair, convinced Mina to back down.

"But" said Tenpo "the other continents themselves are plunged in a war."

"At least, their soldiers aren't actively searching for us, I guess. Let us go to Jabu, it's the closest continent and we'll need a short travel time to get there."

The young princess (let us face it, she was never a queen) twirled her hair for a while and somewhat froze when she saw that her usually red hair were now a bit white, or at least, some bangs were white and others were less reddish than others. She heard about how Ootsutsukis under mental stress gained white hair for a while (until they turned back to red naturally), a vestige of their alien upbringing.

"You've all got to flee now, then."

Mina's mother, a petite, middle-aged woman with brown hair, stepped up.

"The armies will fight there without restrain, it has been two days since the castle fell and the villages are nearly deserted, everyone is heading toward the coast to flee on ships."

"Then, let us start without any hesitation."

Tenpo clenched his fist as Kaguya stood, depressed.

"Kaguya, we understand your sadness but we've got to flee quickly before the armies of the three kingdoms kill us all. I hope you understand our choice, but for the moment… focus on surviving."

She looked at Tenshiro for a moment, tears flowing again for a moment but then slowly got up. Her back pain was here but she powered trough, as others supported her, she turned her head to face Mina's family.

"Are you coming with us ?"

"Nah. We'll stay in this nearly deserted place and live here while three armies are duking it out with all their might nearby… maybe we'll have some bandits tonight too ?"

Kaguya, understanding the sarcasm, nodded before facing Mina again.

"Queen Kaguya, go ahead with the rest of the group, I'll stick with my family and we'll prepare to leave."

"You weren't prepared to leave already ?"

She shrugged.

"We thought that leaving would be a last-ditch attempt at surviving, since the armies wouldn't attack civilians just for kicks. We were proven wrong when we learned that the Nampa village was annihilated some hours ago."

Mikazuchi gasped as the rest of the bodyguard nodded grimly. Kaguya had another bout of depression upon realizing that all this pain could've been avoided if she was a better queen (and if the king wasn't such a douche) but snapped out of it when she realized that she had to flee.

Once the bodyguard and princess quator came out, Kaguya saw that there really were only a few people left, all of whom promptly closed their doors and windows when they saw the draped persons, led by Tenpo and the others, who walked quick enough to reach the safety of the forest, but with enough gentleness to avoid waking up the queen's back trouble, although the princess clearly winced some time.

"Okay, we made it ! Let's wait for the ot-"

Kaguya was promptly grabbed and hidden by Mikazuchi, who pointed toward a rather large group of men, led by a single moustachioed fellow. They looked rather blood-thirsty, what's with the armored skeleton empaled on their pointy flag pole or the uniform with spots of blood there and there.

"THE PRINCESS IS HERE ?!"

"Yes."

An old man came out, looking terrified, sad and confused at the same time. He seemingly denounced Kaguya, and therefore pointed toward the house.

"She's here, now, will you leave this village be ? The other does not deserve this fate."

"We'll leave it if she really is there, otherwise…"

He looks at some houses.

"There's enough to add another skeleton to the flag, ha !"

Kaguya tried to wrench herself free but she was still too weak and was held in her place by her bodyguards, who also held her mouth to avoid being spotted by the sounds, Tenchiro, a bit worried about the princess, quietly held her by the arm, hoping that she'll stop in time.

"Princess. We know why you're upset but this village isn't the first one to go, and it won't be the last. Let us hope that Mina and her family pull trough."

Meanwhile, the army members were busy checking up the house, with the bodyguard and her family being held in check by some soldiers, who were eager to start the killing already.

"Nothing, sir !"

"Haha ! You've been lying to us !"

The general was Makoto Kama, Gozen's most bloodthirsty general, the man was large and terrifying and while he wasn't truly competent, he was extremely feared. Some say that there isn't a single tree left when he's done with something, everything is razed down to the ground in a display of brutality.

Amena and Daishiru only wanted his head on a spike, as he killed the old man and placed his body on the flag pole. The old man was a traitor but Makoto was worse, as Kaguya nearly screamed again when he approached the family.

"What about the former queen ?' asked Makoto to the mother.

"I've got nothing to say to you."

He smiled and turned to glare at the father.

"She left ! She told me where the hell she was going, if you let me live…"

He shut him up and turned toward the kids who were crying, Mina stood there, however, unwavering, the general looked briefly annoyed when he saw that she had no expression of terror on her face, but then he smiled.

"Take the kids, we'll raise 'em into fine soldiers."

Some soldiers advanced to roughly punch the kids in the face, before taking their unconscious bodies to a cart of some kind, they were walking around in a giddy manner, knowing what will happens next, as Mina spat on the general.

"I won't die while begging for mercy, you psychopathic son of a bit-"

"LET IT RIP !"

And then, chaos was unleashed as Mina and the rest of the family died as their entire house was burned to the ground, Makoto was pulling the sword back on its sheath, having killed the entire family by himself.

With other houses slowly being set on fire by other soldiers, heads flews and limbs were torn as people fled for their lives, the soldier gladly attacking them and quickly killing anyone who tried to resist, with only two of them dying of a surprise assault.

Kaguya watch the carnage, too shocked by the massacre to speak, and her and her bodyguards quickly fled to save their lives, or at least, she was dragged by her allies, who were sad at the death of Mina but had something else in mind : surviving.

They kept running and running as Kaguya screamed after a safe distance, both out of the pain in her back and also because she couldn't believe what she saw, her cries of despair slowly fading into the cold, unforgiving night.


	7. Scheming

The main city of Gozen, Akatura, really smelled "peace", "love for others" and "desire to let other persons get in". It was nothing but a large city trapped between immense walls covered in spikes, with bloodthirsty archers who lived to see blood flows, guards with enough sight to see a fly from miles away, paranoid law-applying agents who used their sword more than anything and a constant sense of dread.

People did not live in there, because time was perpetually frozen, after centuries of learning how to hate and fear someone else, the persons inside saw all the law abuse as natural, all the poor merchants having their head blown off by the arrows of archers as a defensive reflexes and the walls has "necessary", to live in Akatura, one needed to accept that horror was everywhere and that the enemies can and will kill on sight, and that victory was near since the enemies of Gozen burned down everything in their countries.

It was a natural reflex to mock the enemies of the king after all, and depicting people from Amena and Daishiru as apes was the favourite tactic of the various papers, taking a jab at Daishonin was also good, what's with their paranoid fear for something, and nobody bated an eye when they learned of the destruction of the country.

In fact, few really cared about such a fact. For them, everything that wasn't in Gozen was second news at best, apart from the war, and people in there, poor and rich, were equal in their sentiment of indifference toward anything that did not belong to their country, these petty people claimed themselves to be patriots but it was merely ignorance and cowardice, people only cared about the position of the enemy armies, to see if it was a good time to flee the hell out or something.

Only the elites knew that there was other continents, and they were all hiding in a massive, intimidating tall structure at the north of the city, much bigger than the Ootsutsuki castle, much more defended and more than capable of handling invasions, with the king lounging on his throne without troubles, forever hidden behind the stone walls.

Said king, however, was actually sitting on his throne and glaring at an unfortunate general, who could only hope to bow down and carefully says "We're sorry", "it was a mistake", "we did not take into account their…" as the monarch unleashed his wrath on everything and everyone. Darjobu Damonaro was the proud descendant of a generation of larger-than-life kings or queens, the desire to be remembered in history was strong in this person.

He wanted to be know at the end who will end the war, unlike all the powerful monarchs who came before him with the same idea in mind, and nothing could enrage him more than learning that his army was pushed back or something, and currently, he thought that his soldiers were busy ransacking the capital of Daishiru, Namara, an hopeful thought which was shattered when he learned that they were merely near the capital, and that attacking it would do nothing but destroy the Gozen army and allows for Daishiru to take back lost territory.

And meanwhile, Amena's own army was hiding in the mountains not far behind the capital, waiting for a chance to strike.

"If the amy isn't brought back quickly, sir, they may invade us."

"The giant wall, built by my dear and powerful and holy ancestor Anaru the 9th, will take care of them ! Only a fool would think that they pose a threat, are you a fool, mister Inero ?"

"No sir."

"Fine, then use catapults to pepper them, throws corpses at them or make comments about the size and weight of their mothers, I don't care ! I want to be seen as the king who got close to the capital of Daishiru, dammit !"

"Plenty of kings nearly did that, mister."

Being the monarch in the war was a dangerous task, assassins were nearly doing the queue to have a chance at killing the king and were sometime only failing because an hidden assassin prevented another from doing her or his job, king Jeofard 7th of Amena was stabbed in the mouth by a ninja during his crowning speech, for an example.

Therefore, many kings succeeded each other and generally had one occasion to have a go at the war for a moment until sickness, ninjas or coup d'états took care of them. Darjobu himself was going to be taken down in four days by the general he was currently yelling at but he had no idea of it, like the general who will eventually succeed him and make the same mistake.

"Plenty of kings got CLOSE, as you said, you wise-ass. But I'M GOING TO GET ESPECIALLY CLOSE TO THAT RAT-FACED KING, AND I'M GOING TO POUND ON HIS FACE SO BAD THAT HIS PORTAITS WILL GAIN THE SCARS."

He leaned back.

"SUGAR."

A servant appeared, holding a plate with a single, tiny cube of sugar, which the king promptly eaten to calm down before turning to look at the general, a sneer slowly forming on his face. The king was tiny, fat and had oversized white side-burns but his smile was perhaps the most unsettling thing the seasoned general saw, it exposed both the yellow teeth of the monarch and his evil ideals. Sometime, the way someone smile before an order is a good way to know that you're going to be sent to pierce the Nadasa front.

"I have a mission for you. Don't worry, our dear enemies already made most of the task for us."

"Announce, my king. All for the glory of Gozen."

He lets out a sigh inside his head however, he was satisfied at the thought of sitting on the comfy-looking throne of the king but looks like the fat man had plans for him, it didn't matter anyways, plenty of others generals were waiting for an occasion to take the King's place, he'll just have to hope that said general will give him a better position.

"The Ootsutsuki clan is no more. Scattered, gone in the wind, burned. You get the idea, the war has moved on to a greater length, general. We cannot afford to go back and lick our wounds, the final battle is near and we must use every opportunity to crush their cities to the ground."

He made yet another sneaky sighs, as a general, he was much more aware of the nature of the war, and saw the words of the king as an attempt to impress him, it failed but he nonetheless nodded in an attempt to prove that he was listening, and raised an eyebrow when he saw that the King's facial expression was now much more maniacal.

"If the rumor are true, one Ootsutsuki survived, specifically, the one called Kaguya. Enter the fallen country of Daishonin and search for her, I don't care about the ways you do it. Kill, murder, slaughter, interrogate the birds, smell the ground, use attacks dogs, do anything to get closer to her and bring her to the Shinju tree safely, our outposts near the roots are mostly safe and you should be able to climb it."

"Sir, if you want the fruit, I'm sure that simply bringing your majesty to the holy Tree is a quicker way for the both of us."

"Haven't you heard ? Several layers of a strange matter protect the fruit, and legend says that only the Ootsutsuki can break the layer and access the fruit. Once she breaks the layers, take the fruit and bring it to the castle to allows for me to eat it."

A popular rumour surrounding the Ootsutsuki was that the tree was made for them, and that their ancestor planted it there so that their descendants could acquire a vast power and dominate the human race later on, it was a foolish legend but commonly used by governments recently, to justify the Daishonin rampage.

"Sir, it is a sin to eat the holy fruit !"

"And it's a sin to respond with a "no" to anything your king says ! Go, find the last Ootsutsuki before she get gutted by a random general and bring her to the Shinju ! Ultimate power is the only thing I need to end this awful war !"

The general got up and thumped on his chest, restraining himself from simply making a few steps and repeatedly punching the smug king to the face, and then proceeded to leave, preparing to head to a devastated country filled to the brim with enemies to find a random girl and climb the tallest structure on the planet for the sake of a king who will be stabbed to death on his bed some days later.

But first, he needed to think of the damn princess, the mission promised to be heard and whining wasn't going to help him.

Kaguya slowly opened her large baggy eyes, revealing that they were actually bloodshot. She groaned in discomfort and tried to sleep again, only to be interrupted when a voice spoke to her. The person who spoke to her was close enough to provoke social discomfort but his voice seemed distant.

"Princess Kaguya ? Are you awake ?

She opened her eyes again and saw that her belov- wait, Tenshiro was walking behind her. She lifted an eyebrow until she noticed that Tenpo was carrying her, apparently, even after her two days worth of sleep, exhaustion was still too strong for her to handle, although the princess insisted on being dropped to walk. She could saw that they were currently in a forest, with Mikazuchi leading.

She searched for Mina for a moment and then froze : the blood, the horrible screams, the cries, all of this came back to her and she nearly fell on the ground, although she was gently lifted by Tenpo, she couldn't help but stares at him, her grey eyes focused on his own sad stare.

"Why ? Why was she killed so suddenly with her family ? She, her family and the village has done nothing wrong ! Why would somebody do this ?!"

"Calm down, princess."

Mikazuchi's voice somehow calmed her down, although she still looked down on the ground. She kept moping for a while, discouraged, disgusted, saddened and aware of the burden she currently was.

"Sometime, people murders for no good reason, princess. Everyone isn't born evil nor good but we must accept that monsters exist and that merely closing our eyes and asking questions won't make them vanish. It is our duty to protect you, princess, and we'll never let these men or women harm you."

Mikazuchi said that without looking at her, even if Kaguya stopped her moping to look at her bodyguard's back, Tenpo anticipated her question.

"I have no family to return to, princess."

"There is no home for me to join back. You are the only thing I and Tenpo live for, princess."

"And you, Tenshiro ?"

The younger bodyguard blushed.

"Well, I came to this continent to have a job, since my family live in one of those islands where the former king fled, so I'm staying here because, hum... well, once this is all over, I gotta get my pay, right ?"

"Right."

She let out a hopeful sigh. No one could attack her with her bodyguards, she was still torn up about Mina but she had no choice but to look forward and somehow hope that once, she'll be able to finally solve this and move on !

And then, she got pounced on by a shadow.


	8. Fighting

Kaguya fell to the ground, her wound in the back made its return know as her face met the ground, ruining whatever remained of the make-up she wore as a princess and queen, she could be upset about the fate of it but she knew better than complain about something like that when her own life was in danger.

She tried to get up but felt as if something heavy was currently standing on her back, the usual screams of "Princess !" were heard but she was stunned by the sudden violence and the presence on her wound did not make it any better. In fact, said figure made the princess's pain when she felt that the person on top grabbed her red-hair, although they went whiter because of the stress, again.

When her vision truly came back, she was greeted with the sight of a corpse : a man, dressed as a soldier of the Daishiru army, gave his last breath near her, his throat sliced by Mikazuchi and her dantô, the young bodyguard was running around before her, seemingly slicing the throat of offenders but unable to reach Kaguya because more and more aggressors were blocking her way.

Instinctively, the princess reached for the top of her head, they were seemingly attacked by a group of bandits and she wanted to free herself from the grasp of one, aware that her bodyguards wouldn't be able to properly fight if she was taken hostage, she managed to seemingly touch arm of her attacker but doing so was a bad move because the initial very tiny yelp of surprise was soon replaced by a scornful shout.

"Stay in place !"

A feminine voice but the punch to the back of the head that followed was, at least, stronger than a man's, and promptly stunned the princess again, although she felt that she was slowly lifted from the ground by the hair, painful but she couldn't hope to do much in her situation.

She does saw Tenpo slamming the head of one of the dude, and Tenshiro stabbing the face of another. The bandits certainly weren't excepting such resistance, given the amount of corpses around the bodyguards, using superior numbers was good but it tends to fall apart when the first strike fail.

The princess could only smile a bit at them, happy that they could defeat the bandits so easily, but quickly gritted her teeth when the female bandit yanked on her hair even harder, making them grow more and more white. A good part of her hairs were still red but now, anybody saw that there was a problem.

"If you do not give up in the space of a minute, the servile dogs are going to lose their master !"

She turned around to glance at the leader, a young, toned woman with short hair. She wore some ragged brown clothes and overall looked like the kind of woman who never saw a single house.

The bodyguards turned their head toward her, or specifically, the princess. Kaguya was rather dissatisfied with the fact that the bandit leader was currently holding a knife up her throat, and it was close enough to cut the skin a bit, the princess took a rock to the back so she did not complained but her pain was still visible as she gritted her teeth, preparing to dome something insane.

"Leave her alone, and we won't massacre your comrades."

Tenshiro spoke, still holding on his rather tiny blade, it was soaked in blood though, giving some credence to his words, the others bodyguards stood there at this point, sharing his words and also rising their weapon or fists, to the worry of the bandits who began to take some steps back.

"Listen in, you dumbs jocks. We won't give ourselves to some AAAAAA-"

Her sudden yell was caused when Kaguya bite the hand that was holding the knife, the teeth of the princess weren't sharp enough to truly rip flesh off and the yell wasn't caused by pain that much but a combination at surprise (at the thought of the idea of biting somebody being even used by a princess) and pain (because still, bite). Therefore, she dropped the knife and let go of the Ootsutsuki' hair, clutching her red hand and yelling words so vulgar, I cannot transcript them.

Anyway, the freed princess tried to crawl toward the bodyguard, she was covered in mud, the wound on her neck was getting more serious as she moved quickly and her back stung her horribly, its as if only a slim cord was keeping the bones together and each of her actions were slowly destroying said cord and breaking her back again but a wish to live made her power trough the pain as Tenshiro leaped to help her, the bandits dashed to prevent him but the other two bodyguards were quicker to act.

"Don't worry, Kaguya ! I'm going to…"

He was kicked in the jaw and pushed back, as Kaguya felt that the same steely grip that caught her hair was now grabbing the kimono in general. She expressed concern both for her sake and Tenshiro's, but she was soon lifted up into the air. She had to admit that the bandit leader never knew how to give up, even if every fiber in the body of said bandit seemingly hated the former Ootsutsuki princess.

She was lifted over the head of the girl and promptly thrown away, crashing onto the ground and gasping at the pain. That said, she still tried to use this to crawl away, noticing after a while that Tenshiro was fighting the girl and seemingly doing good, since she had a huge gash on her chest.

Side-stepping a straight punch, the bodyguard proceeded to grab her arm to throw her over his shoulder and unto the ground, before trying to stab her while she was down. It didn't work however, although the cold steel still managed to pierce a part of her stomach, earning an indignant cry from the leader who nonetheless swiped at his legs with her arm and toppled him.

Landing on his back, the unfortunate bodyguard wasn't quick enough to get back up and his enemy leaped on him with a small dagger, which he blocked somehow with his bare-hand by grabbing the blade at the last moment. He then tried to divert the direction of the blade to strike her in face with his elbow, which worked but only angered her, since she began to bash his chest over and over with her bare hands.

Visibly in pain, he still punched her away, leaving a bruise to the face of the aggressor as he tried to tackle her to stab her in the heart with the same dagger, it failed when she moved out of the way and was stabbed in the shoulder, and she yet again attacked his face, punching him and knocking the air out of him.

Tenshiro was thrown on the ground a bit, as she got up and repeatedly kicked his body. The princess's eyes went wide at that and she got up, ignoring her pain and rushing at the commotion to try to help him, since Mikazuchi and Tenpo were fighting the other assailants without problem.

The protagonist jumped between the two combatants, extending her arms to protect Tenshiro and visibly gulped upon meeting the eyes of the girl : yellow, without anything that indicated that she felt remorse for what she did. It was a bright day but this woman looked more like an insane creature of the night than anything, except that she was real and had one weapon pointed at the heart of the young woman.

"St-Stop please ! Why are you doing this ? We had no intentions of harming you !"

"Look, she care for her handsome bodyguard but not for her poor, ugly people. As excepted of a fallen royalty, really."

Kaguya's neck wound grew worse but she ignored it, and saw that the other twos dealt with the horde of attackers, even if her enemy took her captive, again.

"You know. We weren't really excepting anything when we came here, I mean, we thought you were already fleeing on a ship, but… hey, you somehow managed to walk into us ! And you're as sickeningly dumb as I imagined, man, without the war, I could've been a medium."

The princess shook a glance at Tenshiro, who was seemingly getting up for the second round, and yelped when he was kicked in the ribs.

"Stop !"

"Please, you know what you did ? Simply killing a random asshat won't faze you, I bet that he only followed ya because you were of the royalty. It his fault if he will die here."

She tried to pull herself free but failed again, as more bandits surrounded the group. The princess shoot a terrified glance at all of them, aware that even her bodyguards wouldn't be able to win, and regardless of what happens, a large number of people would die.

"Please stop ! This bloodshed isn't necessary !"

"Come on, you failed to save the life of millions and I'm the meanie because I want to kill four ?! Okay, give me a convincing argument."

She dropped the princess, the bodyguards rushed but the goons formed some sort of wall to block.

"Please, let me deal with this !"

Going over a fallen Tenshiro to try to protect him, she looked at the leader.

"Miss leader."

"Tako."

"Okay, miss Tako. W-Why are you so angry with me ?"

"Daishonin does not exist anymore, it's just a glorious battlefield !"

She started to walk around.

"A thousand of the people you ruled over died the first day, and now, this whole piece of land is just one unholy mess, where everyone wants to kill you. What are you excepting us to do ? I was forced to reunite with all these people because our villages were destroyed, our families killed and plenty of other things. I could tell them but you presumably ignore their meaning."

She stepped on some of the hair of the princess who winced but said nothing, just keeping her bodyguard in her arms as a kind of protection, although she was listening.

"Why should I let you live ? Your family screwed up supremely, we're all dead, like this country, like the burned land. We have no future ahead of us, our children will live in fear of the future and we, the adults, cannot fix this."

She turns around.

"And even if we survive, what's going to happen to our descendants ? They'll live trough the year zero, forced to build in a country, enduring the attacks of other countries and wondering why they're in this heap. And then, at the end of it, they'll loathe us because we are the reason this war happened, we failed to win it and now, it'll take a thousand of years for this country to looks like one again !"

Kaguya still stood, protecting her friend. She knew she failed, and the speech was deranged, but she had to recognize that it was still all the mistake of the father, but it does not matter. She knew that people weren't happy with the way Kyokukei ruled the nation, and the destruction of the Ootsutsuki clan merely expanded the play-field.

She looked down, destruction of the Ootsutsuki clan… she just remembered it, and how much it hurts. But the prospect of dying gave back some motivation and she therefore stood up, standing in front of Tako with outstretched arms, the bodyguards understood the gesture but the wall blocked them, and a weakened Tenshiro could only hope to grip on Kaguya's legs to try to stop her, which was futile because the enemy still sighed and pulled up a blade out of a sheath.

In fact, she had two blades, a katana and a tanto, it would be hard for someone to see them, and therefore, she probably relied on surprise to overwhelm her opponents but Kaguya did not care.

"If you take your revenge, will you swear to let my bodyguards live ?"

"Hehee… why should I hold my promise ?"

"Because you're after me. Not them, they're as innocent as the rest of this country."

"Fair enough."

She heard a muffled "Kaguya" but only shot a small glance, she knew that he would be affected greatly but she hoped to save them with it and thus she turned toward her killer, outstretching her arms as the sword bore down on her head…

But then, she saw the horrors, the dead families, the burned castle, the destroyed villages, all that destruction on her home, all these people who were begging for a saver everywhere…

She screamed and the sword stopped right at the forehead, she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, she would love to stare at Tako and says something like "do it" but she… couldn't. She was afraid of death, her determination at the end was nothing but simply leaving the others alone in a world torn by war. Only great women and men could hope to bear such a burden, and she wasn't among those.

She heard a sly laugh, and merely held her head down. She knew that it was a relief for the others but she realized somehow that she was important for some people, but she was simply weak. Too weak to hope to save her kingdom, or anyone whom she even call friends, and she did not move as the ear-grating laughs of the barbarian princess resonated.

"At least, you tried to go out in a blaze ! I'll make you regret your little burst of doubt, take them away !"

She pointed a sword at Kaguya's heart until the bodyguards were taken away (and their weapon taken too, since they could serve). They were seemingly angered by the result of the attack but nonetheless looked at the Ootsutsuki queen with a hint of sadness and concern, worried about her mental health since she tried to die.

"As for you, princess Kaguya… the trip will be a lot shorter !"

"How ?"

The butt of the blade being slammed into her face was her only answer, as Kaguya fell unconscious, being, however, still caught by Tenshiro before both were taken away by the band.

And, meanwhile, a figure was observing it from the wood, before scurrying back somewhere else.


	9. Cage

Tenpo walked, he could only dare to scorn at the people who were busy escorting him, his colleagues and the princess to their "base" in the woods. It was a seemingly deep part of the Ontomi woods because they were walking for one hour, even if they stopped sometimes to check for the presence of the armies of the other countries, none of these men would really care about saving the hostages but they would probably like to unleash their fury on a bunch of armed savages, though Tenpo as he launched glares toward each of the bandits.

The princess was knocked out and carried by the chief, who was wounded because of her fight with Tenshiro but kept on walking regardless. The sky was cloudy and the entire forest fell into silence hours ago, giving an eerie vibe to the trip. He couldn't believe that the situation turned up so badly for them, especially because their camp was near the camps, by a large margin but still quite close on the map.

The camps were a group of structure used by the warring countries, all of which were standing near the Holy Tree. People said that it was to protect the fruit from greedy persons but it was mainly a savage war zone where plenty of soldiers died all day, unable to take the enemy position and dying near the Shinju.

People would consider it an honor to die near such a structure but he had a different idea about it.

The tale of the god tree was great but other people, like each of the bodyguards, knew that rumors said that the Shinju wasn't holy. In fact, it was a mere tree in a forest until the war set the entire forest ablaze, it survived the onslaught however and some said that the blood and flesh of the soldiers who died near it was absorbed in the roots of the tree.

And humans kept fighting and gruesomely dying near it, and it thanked them by feeding on the blood to get bigger and bigger, the "chakra fruit" was nothing more than the trapped life energy of armies and armies of young women and men, and because it grew, its zone of influence became bigger and bigger.

In fact, the tree was really alive according to some. A low, very deep growl could be heard coming from it sometime and people says that it's waiting for one side to finally win the war, since it means that it would emerge as a giant beast and destroy the world. It got closer to the "god become a tree" story but nonetheless, that's what people said about it.

He snapped back to reality when he saw that they were nearing a cave, and that wooden spikes, spears and other sharp weapon were seemingly protecting said cave from assault, and it worked since plenty of corpses were impaled on these spikes, most bearing the uniforms of the warring countries but some had simple civilians clothes.

"We've got to escape."

He whispered that to Mikazuchi, who was busy helping a battered Tenshiro to stand up and walk. Tenpo could've helped but he was on another side.

"I'm already thinking about a plan, jumbo. Keep looking distressed."

He nodded and looked around, he saw a shadow once or twice in the woods but it was, at worst, a scout. Which meant that the other armies were going to burst in soon, or it was a simple civilian or a bandit who scouted for the presence of the armies. Who knew ? All he thought about was a way to free himself before this colony knew troubles.

The cave itself was protected by a huge boulder, which seemingly closed the door of the cave and protected the inhabitants, although it wouldn't roll into the cave since said cave was too tiny for that. However, people had to push it en masse to even make a tiny entrance, and the people who entered were forced to do the same to avoid being crushed.

The location of the bandits wasn't that huge, it was just a medium-sized cave, with candles to light it up and a number of small huts inside, some children were running around the group as an old chaman explained to a silent audience that the Shinju was the Devil or something.

The chief, Tako, smiled and neared some wooden cage. Looking at them revealed that there was some bones in there, and even an entire skeleton in one case. He said nothing about it however, the bodyguards saw worse. They feared to hear the princess's reaction however, unlike Tako who raised her hand to wake up the princess in her usual way.

The bodyguards winced a bit when the first slap landed, Kaguya quickly woke up however, and laid an eye on her surroundings. They were pretty "happy" about the princess not seeing the bloody defenses, she already suffered badly enough after all, and whatever was going to happen next would probably be traumatizing enough already. They flinched when Tako made a move to grab the left arm of the still-confused Ootsutsuki princess before heading toward the cage with the skeleton.

They winced even more when the innocent princess was threw in the cage, letting out a scream upon seeing the skeleton with her, and all the large hairy spiders inside of it, the body, even without the legs, was larger than an apple, they had "horns" in the back, were all white and had 16 eyes.

Tenpo was beyond angry now, but the usually calm Mikazuchi herself was biting her lips in anger.

Then, the leader turned toward the bodyguards.

"My dear friends ! You killed my men and wounded me rather badly, but I'm forgiving… After all, weren't you brainwashed by this woman ? I'll let you live if you swear that you won't help her anymore, and as a test, let's see which one of you is going to run and save her from these spiders."

Mikazuchi approached Tenpo.

"These are Cobaro Spiders. They're going to bite the princess if she keeps screaming, and their poison in large quantity could dissolve flesh. We've got to make our choices quick."

The male bodyguard nodded, he could easily leaps in and take Tako hostage if he wanted to, but he had too many enemies in this place, enough to overwhelm both he, Mikazuchi and a fresh Tenshiro. They'll probably take a bit more than half of the bandits with them in death but they'll be leaving Kaguya behind, surrounded by angry bandits and their leader. He couldn't do that, she will do a great thing someday, and he had to protect her until then.

Mikazuchi herself was thinking. Kaguya wasn't a princess anymore, and never was a queen at all. If she ditched her, she'll probably gain more freedom and will be able to move around without a whiny load, but at the same time… with or without Kaguya, the situation would always be the same. And it gave her something to live for, since the destruction of her birth-place, she was alone.

They were ready to jump in but were cut short when Tenshiro freed himself and dashed at the cage, right as one spider was quietly coming out of an empty eye socket and made its way toward a still-screaming princess, who stopped short when the bodyguard opened the cage to pull her out of it, leading her to safety, even if one stray spider managed to bite his foot.

They all gasped, except Tako, who lifted an eyebrow in amusement and made a hand movement to receive a spear, a request answered by a guard who was too surprised to notice that another weapon was being stolen from him. After all, who in the world would save an Ootsutsuki after everything the clan has done ?

He felt the "mouth" of the spider as it bite his flesh, tearing apart the skin as the fangs penetrated to the bones, he lets out a long, horrible scream and fell on the floor, throwing the arachnoid away as he did that, using his body as a cushion for the princess. He wasn't paid enough to be attacked by demonic spiders and be crushed by a young woman who was heavier than her slender built indicated, but it wasn't important.

"What's the matter Tensh… oh."

She looked at the wound on his feet, getting up slowly as she advanced to try to somehow heal it until Tako pulled on her hair to get her off the young bodyguard, who tried to get back up but fell because of the wound.

"Good job helping the princess ! As a reward, I'll put you out of your misery."

She raised a spear to point it at the head of her enemy but was surprised when her weapon was cut in two, courtesy of Mikazuchi, who used a dagger she stole earlier. Tako, amused, lifted an hand to try to grab her face but was again caught off-guard when a large fist hit her square in the face, sending her flying toward a rock and letting the princess go.

"CHIEF !"

Angrily rebuking the concern with an hand gesture, she got up but was yet again taken by surprise when Mikazuchi kicked her away even further.

It took no time for the bodyguards to be surrounded by dozen of guards, Kaguya herself, who was sitting near her friend, was also stopped by 4 guards, until the chief got up.

"You want to do it the hard way, huh ?! I'm helping them ! Why are you trying to kill me ?! What have I done wrong ?!"

"You take way too much pleasure in hurting others to be better than a bunch of soldiers."

The female bodyguard stood proud near Kaguya, who was holding Tenshiro's hand but nonetheless looked at her protector.

"Your goal is good. You are not."

Tenpo himself stood there, arms folded. He too felt that he was doing something bad but still felt that she was too tyrannical to be better than them. The fact that she tried to murder Tenshiro before playing friendly with the rest was an indication.

"Ho okay ?! Guards, put them all in cages !"

"Why not kill them ?"

"Yes… why not just kill them ?"

She walked forward, holding a small dagger and approaching her enemies, holding the knife near their throats. The princess looked especially scared but the two other bodyguards just stared her down, she tried to move on to Tenshiro but Kaguya, of all people, leaped to get between her and the fallen guard.

"Please, do not harm him ! Can't you see he's already hurt ?!"

They sighed, she couldn't harm a fly, there was no way she could oppose resistance if Tenshiro was attacked since she would try to talk her way out of it.

"Fine, I won't hurt him… emphasis on "I". Guards, throw them into cages !"

Both Mikazuchi and Tenpo got up to brawl but Kaguya rose.

"Please don't do this ! You're going to get killed !"

They looked at her, knowing full well that they were going to be killed soon enough, but stopped anyway, aware that they were going to be killed but unable to do anything since a significant number of these guards were around them, and leading them to spider-less caves.

Tako smiled in smug satisfaction.

"Chief."

"Hum ?"

A bandit awkwardly salutated.

"We think that some spiders were let loose."

"Find them then ! It's not like they're going to be a menace to armed men like you !"

She walked to her own hut while the soldier gasped and crouched down to hunt for spiders.


	10. Healing

The wooden cage was located in a dark, small tunnel, which was faintly illuminated by some torches. The heat was unpleasant, at best, and the bandit in charge of watching the caves were visibly shaking, sometime letting out small sighs as they wiped out sweat. It wasn't cold already in the "main" cave but here, it was hot enough to make a fly drop to the ground as a puddle.

"Well, shit. Look at that."

One of the guards, a large, bearded fellow poked the other watcher and pointed at the dead fly. The other guards merely wiped out sweat, at least, those demonic spiders wouldn't reach them.

"Why the hell are we guarding this, instead of taking part in the ceremony ? I do not enjoy it but at least, we'll be able to mourn without feeling like we're in the Nikubo desert."

"Hum. At least, we cannot hear the wails. I do hope that the poor assholes who will succeed us will be able to hold out. Man, I'd give anything to just come out and bath in some crystal-like river, as skimpily-dressed girls dance around me, promising…"

"You're way too ugly to catch the attention of one girl, and why are they skimpily dressed in the cold, and bathing ?"

"Your logic fucking sucks."

They heard a moaning and turned back to briefly stare at the content of the cage. There was the former princess and the bodyguard who got beaten up by the boss, bitten by a spider and who was plunged in the heat. He was unconscious and lying on the princess's laps but apparently, the pain was so great that not even the dreamworld could make him ignore his wounds.

Noticing the attention, the princess pleaded.

"Do you have a doctor, or someone who could help him ?! Please !"

"Sorry ma'am. This dude is one of the reasons the ceremony is taking place, I doubt anyone with a soul would heal him…"

They stared at his grotesque foot, the fangs of the spider were seemingly bigger than his toe, and the black-somewhat red large hole in the middle of the foot confirmed that he was indeed bitten by a nasty thing. The venom could be stopped with some leaves but what kind of imbecile would help him ?

"Listen, miss, we might let a doctor come in if you just shut him up…"

"But how ?"

"I dunno, huh, put your hand on his mouth ?"

Naïve, Kaguya did that but obviously, it did not stop. In fact, he lets out a long, drawn wail of pain, with the princess's feeble attempts at calming him down with hugging failed. The guards smiled, the whole wail was loud but it was fun to mess with the princess's mind. The others already tried to capture a guard, and there was at least 18 bandits with the task of watching over the cage.

Once again, tears streamed down princess Kaguya's cheeks as she softly stroked his hair, unable to do anything else. There was also a lot of other sad people up there, with a nice temperature, for once. That said, the princess's suffering was still rather unnerving to watch, not because she cried out acid tears or something like that, but mostly because they saw that she was human.

It was hard to describe, but they felt that it wasn't like what Tako, their leader, described. She wasn't a baby eating monstruosity who ate babies by the dozen and laughed as she did so, she seemed as human and vunerable as them, and while she had the task of defending her country, it was already undergoing this sort of crisis for years.

And then, they felt a gloved hand on their shoulder and turned around to see that one guard was there. Unlike the two young guards, this one had a borderline-white mustache, rudimentary glasses and walked with a bit of an hunch, he could probably still guard but it was clear that he wasn't born for the job.

"Go up there, boys, I've seen this kind of ceremony enough."

They made a small gesture and went upward, as the new man looked around, held out a small key and opened the cage. The princess stared at him, confused, and instinctively moved in front of Tenshiro to protect him, even if it was futile since the man merely whipped out some medicine instruments, not enough to actually fix him up but presumably enough to save his life and stop the pain to a degree.

"What are you doing, sir ?"

"I'm just going to use some medical degrees to help him. I do not want to break you out but as a former doctor… well, let's just says that I hardly enjoy the wails of the patient."

"Thank you…"

She made a genuine smile. Kaguya's face was pretty but people said that it was especially beautiful when she smiled, and it showed. She had some bad teeth but otherwise, she truly looked like a princess.

"Ho, and don't worry. I know, that breaking out isn't an option for you."

"Why ?"

"You're too soft for that."

He began treating the wound, the venom of the spider was very slow, it fact, it had yet to truly leave the feet area, it helped the doctor, even if Tenshiro tried to let out one or two screams of anguish but nobody came to check, the former princess was still stroking his head, looking at him with a mix of pity and sadness, she would love to help him but she could only place her hope in the doctor and pray.

It continued, the flesh of the feet was completely torn apart at this point, as he began to try to heal the venom with some leaves, she closed her eyes at this part, afraid of seeing it and frankly disgusted by it all. She knew that it was necessary but she could only hope to hug her bodyguard as hard as she could to distract him.

She hated the way she was useless. For now, the only thing she has done was getting in the way, being captured and hugging her wounded bodyguard wile someone else took care of him. She truly wished she could help them in some way, stop being a load and actually take care of herself.

She couldn't save all the people of her country or Mina. And it was beyond frustrating, her back was still hurting, a reminder of her botched escape of the castle.

She stopped, however, when she saw the foot all stitched up as the doctor stood, with his hands covered in blood. He looked a bit satisfied with himself and Tenshiro was much calmer now, breathing normally and not screaming in pain like the other times, even if he winced at some random moments, he was still much calmer.

"And he's all fixed up ! He won't be able to run, or fight for a while or do some athletic things but heh, he's alive ! "

"Thank you !"

She smiled, crying yet again, but in joy this time.

"Thank you…"

She repeated, and was ready to yet again compliment him until some blade went trough the head of the doctor, almost instantly killing him. The princess had no choice but to let out a loud scream upon seeing this, horrified by the sudden death of the amicable folk, and got up to protect the still-unconscious bodyguard from the attacker.

"Who there ?! S-Show yourself !"

She saw a random dark-blue shadow pass by but it was all, the princess, feeling that it was dangerous but also confused, stood up and tried to softly wake Tenshiro up, which he did after some seconds, taking a look at his surrounding and briefly shrieking at the sight of the corpse.

"I did nothing, Tenshii ! I did nothing !"

"Hey, calm down princess ! I know you wouldn't harm a fly !"

He looks at it.

"Anyway, what happened ?"

"This mister healed you and then, someone stabbed him and vanished ! I'm scared !"

Tenshiro slowly got up to star at her.

"Don't worry, Kaguya. I'm going to get us out of there, first, where are the others ?"

He looked around as the princess started to fumble, she was clearly trying to remember it but just couldn't ! How convenient ! The young man just sighed, aware that she had usually poor memory, and got up before helping her to get to her feet.

"I'm leading."

"Nono ! You're going to get wounded !"

She came out of the cage, leading the way and holding his hand, hiding her blush and ignoring the own blush that was slowly forming on the dude's face. She did take a weapon from the guard, with the wounded bodyguard taking another, she wanted to use her's for intimidation however.

"I won't let you get wounded ever again, you hear me ?!"

He smiled for a moment as they walked but stopped when he saw that other guards were killed off, which Kaguya recognized as the one from earlier. She nearly screamed but realized that the murderous would spot them, and instead, continued to walk, looking at the other guy with fear on her face.

"Don't die on me, please !"

"No worries."

They both noticed that there was blood coming out of a wall, and, softly pushing Kaguya in case, Tenshiro pressed both hands on it and constated that it opened to reveal that several dead guards were present in a tunnel, having seemingly died recently, as early as two minutes in.

There was light outside and Tenshiro closed the door.

"Princess, listen, there is someone after us. We've got to quickly find Mikazuchi and Tenpo, and exit this place. This may be dangerous since, well, plenty of people died in there but we can't remove the rock and this is our best bet. Do not panic, I beg of you."

"O-Okay, I'm going to sit there and… wait !"

She ran back to the room where the cage was located, with Tenshiro following as much as possible given his recent wound, and proceeded to calmly arrange the dead doctor's body, placing his medical tools on his chest, closing his eyes, putting him in a more dignified pose and laying his weapon next to him, much to the surprise of her bodyguard, who looked around in case of assassin.

She also took a key, even if she did it with "respect."

"He saved you, so I guess that it'll be nice if I sorta pay him back…"

"I understand."

He smiled and they both went, with Kaguya stopping again to arrange the corpses of the other guards on the way (but he stopped her at the tunnel) before they started to walk for a bit, and finally saw the main part of the cave, with the large boulder, needless to say, the place was much more smoke-filled thanks to a fire, and the fact that there was a large amount of corpses being incinerated.

Tenshiro heard the wails and cries of the women or children of the fallen warriors and winced, aware that he caused all that pain, and prepared to walk toward the cage of the two other bodyguards, which could be seen from a distance and not guarded, since both were seemingly knocked-out.

He also noticed that a large amount of armed persons were getting ready to walk toward them to get their revenge, even if they were forced to just sit there, no guards was, well, guarding them, due to the proximity.

"We need to be stealthy. Princess, we're going to sneak up to that cage and maybe use that key, if it does not work, let us use this sword, but this is a last resort option. Okay ?"

She nodded and both went on to use stealth, even if Kaguya's attempts were pretty laughable, with her dramatically popping her head, using ham-handed hand signals, talking in an unusual gruff voice and even, at a point, eating a worm right in front of Tenshiro's face.

"What the hell, Kaguya ?"

"I gotta eat."

She continued to crawl until she briefly froze, the man lifted an eyebrow and froze like her when he saw that the poor princess stumbled upon the large spiders who nearly killed him. Making her slowly, but surely, crawl back.

And then, Kaguya lets out a loud wince when one spider started to crawl at her, but she had to shut up, only being able to watch as the arachnid slowly approached, baring venomous fangs, large, venomous, painful fangs…

And then, the boulder blew up.


	11. Collapse

Kaguya had no choice but to shield herself from the onslaught of rock, the explosion caught everyone off-guard, be it the guards, the stealthy princess and her bodyguards or the prisoners, who lifted their eyes away from the ground to focus on the freshly opened entrance, parts of the big boulders were lying on the ground, the biggest of them crushing or injuring some unlucky bandits.

A tiny rock luckily crushed the spider near Kaguya and another missed her head by an inch, even if it still cut her cheek enough to leave a nasty scar. Ignoring the pain, the princess turned toward her bodyguard to check his status and lets out a sigh of relief when she saw that he was still alive, shocked but nonetheless alive.

And alive enough to just grab and start to run toward the cages, two guards noticed them and started to intercept them, mostly because they were already in the way, however, with a quick horizontal slash, Tenshiro slashed the neck of one guard cleanly and took his lance to throw it at the other guard, who fell dead immediately. Kaguya ran after him, panicked.

"T-Tenshiro ! Why ?!"

"Princess, we gotta make it quick !"

He ran past their corpses and she did too, trying her best to ignore them as she ran after him, guards spotted them but they seemingly had better things to do, like surviving, so most of them merely yelped an "HEY !" from the safety of their hiding place and did not bother to search them.

And they had good reflexes because Kaguya stopped in mid-run, since rows of soldiers appeared, each of whom held a bow. The princess was horrified by combat and, of course, lacked proper military experience but she knew that it only meant one thing : arrows rains, mostly because it wasn't hard to make pointy projectiles + closed space.

She ducked behind a rock at a fantastic speed while yelling, mostly because Tenshiro was right in the path of the arrows fired upon the caves. He couldn't help but watch as the deadly projectiles flew toward the cornered opponents, and himself, the bodyguards themselves were protected by the cage, and also because soldiers did not want to randomly aim for targets who couldn't ran away already.

Tenshiro dashed at the rock however, a large part of him made the run out of desperation, as a futile last attempt at surviving, everything vanished from his sight at this point, and anything wasn't of importance now, all the strength in his body was focused on his legs and feet and getting to safety was the only thing that mattered.

He was too far however, and the wound was still ever present, pain was slowly spreading on his legs, the poison wasn't coming back, mind you, but so much efforts minutes after healing a rather grievous wound wasn't the best thing to do, only his survival, and the sheer despair in the face of Kaguya as she watched him struggle, motivated him.

He leaped, extending his arms, it wasn't going to push Kaguya away since the rock was large (but still not large enough for him to reach, of course) but it could help him, at this point, he wasn't sure to survive, since images of his life flashed right before his eyes, time seemingly freezing just for him.

He saw his birth in an old house in a village near the castle, he saw how he was taken away at a young age to defend princess Kaguya as a young child, he was fully trained and equipped, much better than the usual soldiers and, of course, he would be dead if he ever tried to have something of a relationship with the princess, not to mention that he and the others weren't seen as true human beings.

He wasn't mean to have goals in life, or hobbies or anything such as that, he only needed to care about defending princess Kaguya, and his "life" wasn't of value compared to her. Of course, he had to hide the growing emotion he felt towards her, or attempts to ignore her attempts, both knew what it meant if they were discovered.

And he landed, right in front of the rock, failing hard metaphorically and literally, his last thoughts would've been just how close he was to surviving, if it wasn't for Kaguya grabbing his hands and pulling him to safety right as the arrows hit the ground, with the feet of the young man inch away from the arrow, close enough to nearly piece the toes in fact but both did not care, even when the screams started.

Tenshiro slowly got up a bit, still hiding behind the rock and stared at Kaguya's wide eyes for a long moment, and he did the same for a long, long moment, both did not know how but they started to get closer, inches by inches, they couldn't help but stare into they eyes as they did that, and slowly, both of their hands started to held the others. They eventually closed their eyes when their face were merely inch apart, perhaps because they did not want to see the cave any longer…

Their lips were about to connect, and they did for a second, until a dramatic laugh ceased it all and shattered apart the dream-like atmosphere. Ryojiki Gurmanchi stood there in front of his men, grinning madly with teeth far too sharp to belong to a mere man. No one in the continent wished to be in a room with the man, unless they were on his side, even if he walked in alone, he would've scared the living crap out of everyone, with or without the large sword hanging from his belt.

It was the perfect sword, large enough to cut trough armor and flesh in one single swoop, but also light enough for such a man to wield with expertise. It was pretty clear that none of them had the durability that was needed to survive one blow, or enough expertise to dodge said blow, even Tako held her dagger with fear, she feared no soldiers but the squad of Daishiru had only one goal, she heard, and that goal was to simply annihilate Daishonin.

Everything, its culture, its inhabitants, anything that belonged to the Ootsutsuki had to be taken down swiftly, not a single thing had to stay up and only healthy men should be brought into the army, anything else was fair game, and having the most psychopathic soldiers of the entire kingdom in charge of the greatest, most feared general of said kingdom who had the most devastating weapon in the world near him only made the task easier.

"Well, well, well ! Just my luck, I found a bunch of savages to exterminate and I can capture the princess if I play my cards right ! Destroying villages until the last house was nothing more than some few stones laying on the ground was fun but uninteresting at a point."

The survivors and armed persons stood near Tako, who observed the general leader with a stoic glare. The panic was evident in her body language however, and she could barely make a come-back without some stuttering, both the princess and Tenshiro used the distraction of both camps to walk toward the cage, earning little to no resistance from anyone, as Kaguya followed him.

"When this is all over Kaguya, I'd like to tell you that, huh…"

He opened the cage as Mikazuchi and Tenpo came out, both were smiling warmly, even if Kaguya and Tenshiro suddenly assuming their love for one another could've been done outside of the battlefield, they'd have to get away soon however because the bandits were slowly recovering and preparing to face the might of the Daishiru soldiers, Tako leaped first and used some daggers to slay the first wave of soldiers coming at her, soon joined by the others.

She stabbed around, not mowing down entire enemies by herself but just holding out, she felt the swords cutting her flesh apart, and that her blood was spilling as much as the others soldiers but did not care, she wanted for her companions to be safe from harm and distracting the soldiers as much as possible was one of the best things she could do for that.

Ryujiki merely watched from his spots, seeing his soldiers being killed was annoying both for him and his causes, since he still liked those lil guys, and losing too much soldiers to kill some rats trapped in a cave was unfit of his stature. He approached one of his men and just told him one thing : go ahead and release the others, before stepping back to look at the bandits, Tako was standing amongst the corpses as the civilians and others members of her gang were fleeing, she was wounded but smiled eerily, aware that her success angered him.

"Come on, don't you have other training targets ? These soldiers aren't so competent when the target defend itself, right ?"

"Good point."

He drops down from his spot, pulling out his blade. The facial expression on Tako's face was one of pure psychopathic glee : she was going to kill one general, the most feared one at that ! The kingdoms will learn to fear her, and she'll do that by hanging the severed head of the man to a spike and proudly exposing it, she'll do much better than whatever the Ootsutsuki clan did for centuries and finally take a stand, a victorious stand, mind you, against Daishiru !

The princess and her friends were also running toward the exits, blending in with the population, some of them hated Kaguya who was recognizable despite the dirty kimono but nonetheless, survival was yet again stronger and both sides just wanted to flee, Kaguya herself was focused on surviving until she caught the glimpse of a crying child on the floor, seemingly abandoned by the parents, the princess, without a change in beat, ran towards him to try to pick him up and ran again.

"Princess, we've got to hurry !"

"I know but this a child ! If I can save someone from these monsters, I'll do it, that's all, now focus on…"

Multiple screams of pain deafened everyone running as those ahead of the lines realized that hidden soldiers of Daishiru were taking the tunnels, and also that they weren't taking prisoners, soon, people ran away back into the cave, searching for any exit free of soldiers while the ones invading trough the tunnel were quick to join the main part of the cave to flank the bandits, much to the surprise of Tako.

"Good job."

The general turned toward a ninja clad in dark blue, he still had the blood of those guards he slayed on his knives, and looked at the massacre, his stare wasn't one of pity, or disgust or even plain anger. It was the stare of a man who did not saw his enemies as alive in the first place, he was an husk of an human being but turned his attention towards the generous amount of gold offered by the general.

"That's for having told us how to go to the damn place without impaling ourselves on these spikes, and for doing a damn good job ! Think you could catch the princess ?"

The ninja, if he wanted to, would've caught Kaguya long ago but a bigger bag of gold, offered by another figure, convinced him that it wasn't worth it. The shinobi bowed, a sign of respect towards those he admired, that general appreciated the competence of his underlings, followed every order and was competent. However, he loved war, presumably way too much, and took a drastic approach to every situation, needless to say, he had to stroke the ego of the general to the max to avoid a painful death if Ryujiki found out about his deal.

"I cannot. She's surrounded by a crowd and her bodyguards, it would be difficult to sneak up and catch her."

"Kay, go back to your ninja dojo or whatever and awaits further instructions."

The ninja fled quickly as Ryujiki approached his cornered foes, Tako and 6 remaining bandits were waving their swords at the enemy, barely intimidating the soldiers who nonetheless kept their distance, afraid of losing their lives in a victorious battle.

"STOP !"

The general walked toward the defeated foes and smiled eerily, yet again, his large fangs flashed in front of everyone, they looked like they could were made to be break bones, and none of them really wanted to see if such a theory was true, the man loved to have legends to scare his soldiers straight.

"We gotta take some healthy warriors to replace the soldiers we lost."

The soldiers nodded and prepare to grab the bandits, at least until everybody fleeing burst out of the tunnel to take another.

Of course, they were warned by the progressively louder and closer cries of pain and panic but nobody saw it coming and everyone was caught off-guard for a moment, including the guards, and such a distraction was noticed by the fighters, who pushed trough the lines of guards with all they got, Tako herself fled out of necessity while the rest choose to sacrifice themselves to save her, even as she screamed in agony.

She couldn't see the final battle of her friends because she was dragged in the mass, Kaguya and her gang were also running but it was clear that Tenshiro was heavily suffering because of the wound on his feet and he slowly lost pace, he was becoming weaker and slower at every second, and did not even bother to be surprised when he tripped and fell to the floor.

"Tenshiro ?!"

Kaguya whipped around and screamed as soon as she saw him crumpled to the floor as soldiers approached, and stopped dead to try to help him, at least until Tenpo grabbed her by the arm to keep on running, as Tenshiro managed to let out a last smile to her before she vanished in one of the exits, with the soldiers ignoring him since hot damn, the princess was nearby.

And he soon fell unconscious, chuckling : He just had the occasion to reveal his emotions and for that, he was going to die alone in a cave… but he did not regret it, he regretted nothing at all in fact, he regretted letting Kaguya alone but at least, she would probably live… he hoped.

However, before actually falling unconscious, he heard words.

Something about "taking him away".


	12. Power

The land was nothing but… strangely beautiful.

It was a land full of life and vegetation, trees grew tall and dominated both lands and skies, only matched by the mountains in size and majesty.

It was far before the birth of Kaguya, far before the existence of the kingdoms, it was a world free of the structures of the human and their war, it was, to put it simply, a brand new world, some traces of it already had civilization but it was new, scattered around and still babbling, humans weren't invading trees, in fact, they descended from them merely years ago, at least, for some of them.

Speaking of these humans, one of them was running in the wood, barely gasping for breath as he tried to, sometimes, looks back to see if the predators running after him were still on his heels, and he had no choice but to let the same yelp whenever he saw the hulking, tiger-like animals running after him, all of whom were slowly getting closer, flashing their sharp white teeth.

The human was slower and tinier but what he lacked in speed and strength, he had in cunning and agility, the man quickly leaped up over the place to lose them, a process which was mostly successful since the animals were letting out cries of frustration, clawing at the ground madly as they progressed trough the thick forest, sometimes losing tracks of their target but finding it back, much to the pleasure of their stomach.

The man knew that staying up in trees wouldn't help, these beasts bore no name for the moments, and were merely knows among the tribes as "flesh-eaters". The name was commonly used to describe anything with claws, fangs and a desire to eat humans but these tigers were different by virtue of killing for sports : while the others predators were happy to just grab one human or two and let the rest go, those were vicious carnivores, smart and bloodthirsty.

Plenty of tribes died when these hunters attacked at night, the beasts spending time to quietly climbing up mountains to find the caves, their hatred for humans went beyond hunting, they could drop everything just to kill one human, a flesh-eater would cross mountain-ranges in two nights if it meant killing humans, there was no mercy to be excepted from them and even at such a primitive state, humans understood that there animals were bad news.

He leaped behind a rock once he was out of their sight, breathing loudly as he dared to take a peek… and saw the humongous claw of one of the flesh-eaters coming right at this hiding spot, the man had no choice but to leapt as the rock was destroyed by the powerful attack of the tiger, the flesh-eaters were the worst nightmare of the primitive human race, hard to kill, powerful and fast, they were at the top of the food chain and while they obviously had competitions, groups of them simply couldn't be defeated unless tribes united themselves.

The tigers knew this and therefore slowly followed the man, who was too panicked to even think about running. He was screwed, both parties knew that, and the one with the razor-sharp teeth was enjoying this, in fact, the animals growled at each other, deciding that one single human couldn't go trough the "playing" that came before finishing off a prey and decided to get over with it, the problem being that only one of them wanted to feel the satisfaction that came with murdering the sole homo sapiens and they were quite willing to fight over it.

Exploiting this, the lone human began to flee again, much to the frustration of the predators who once again dashed after him, the human was so focused on outrunning them, and his pursuers were so focused on imagining ways to tear him apart while keeping him conscious, that they did not notice the light slowly descending from the moon and slowly reaching the location of the hunt.

A white flesh-eater outran his fellow predators and roared in excitation, aware that it was going to kill him. It was huge, scarred everywhere and bore the blood of a fresh kill on its fangs and claws, a large old behemoth who slowed down a little to give his target a little bit of hope, humans were nothing less than monkeys without too much fur but he liked how expressive their faces were, and how quick their smiles faded.

His face wasn't as flexible however, and the white behemoth was still roaring in joy when a huge metallic ship crashed on it, instantly killing it as the resulting shockwave kicked everyone on their rears, be it the humans or the tigers who weighted more than one ton each.

Both animals and man were quick to get up on their feet, looking as confused as possible. A large, gray metallic object stood there, unknown to any creature in existence at this point, the objet wasn't inactive however, and both parties could see humanoids forms moving inside of it, in fact, the ship was seemingly shaking, worrying everyone outside, with the tiger growling at it and making vague claw swipes at the air in an attempt to intimidate, the man himself just sat down, too stunned to event think of fleeing.

The ship strangely opened like a flower, with the roof spreading apart in a way that would've been called beautiful if the human already had grasp on poetry, the fact that people were inside could've made it better if it wasn't for the fact that said persons were… strange. As if, all of them were covered in white spikes, with red hairs, blank eyes and a third eye, some having it on their throat or cheek. All of them looked around, seemingly fascinated beyond belief. A volcano acting up in the horizon caught the ship's attention, especially.

"Ha ! I can see why coming to Earth was the plan ! A fantastic idea, Dai !"

The leader stood proud, he was taller, larger and older than the others, and his third eye was placed on his forehead. He was busy haughtily staring at the tigers, who were circling the ship, afraid but not ready to back down yet. The human was largely ignored, since he was a much lesser threat. Needless to say, simply going on their way would've been a much better options for the flesh-eaters since they were picked off the ground by an unknown force as soon as Dai raised his hand.

"Is that the greetings that the Earthlings gave us ? How pitiful !"

In a single swipe of his hands, all the tigers were propelled away from them with immense speed, instantly dying as soon as they hit the ground, the Ootsutsuki watched the spectacle with nothing more than cold amusement, the beasts, while intimidating, were nothing compared to what dwelled in space, they'd gleefully trade huge tigers for these abominations up there.

Sae, a female-looking Ootsutsuki, turned toward the human and quickly used gravity to attract him toward the rest of the clan, all of whom surrounded him, the new human could see many things inside the ships, such as machines or technology too complex for him to grasp, but he wasn't focused on that, the unfortunate young human was yelling his lungs out, clawing at the face of the aliens without any effect on them, the display was amusing and instructive for them and eventually, they let him drop to the floor when he got tired.

"So that's an human ? They looks pretty similar to us, even without all our… characteristics."

"It's a new race, a bunch of moneys who descended from the trees years ago, for now, they are too busy surviving to really be of interest. They have no extra limbs, cannot regenerate, have no chakra and cannot fight the various predators hunting for them… what they do have, is numbers, intelligence, a tendency to use dolls and a potential for violence that no other race on this planet has."

"Hum ? Seems just scared and helpless."

"Wait until they're done establishing themselves as rulers of this planet, once the surviving phase ends, then they will tear themselves apart."

"Why not just rule over them right now ?"

The Ootsutsuki leader walked toward part of the ship and pulled out a large seed, easily the size of a truck and managed to bring it out of the ship without much difficulty.

"We're just going to take over a small portion of this planet and see what happens. We'll be spectators and we aren't going to take part on whatever will happens, we'll probably lose our powers over time since we'll have to mate with humans but nonetheless, and if the country we'll build is destroyed by their wars, one of us will eat the holy fruit to reign over them."

"They would not destroy it in the first place if we ruled over them now."

"We swore neutrality."

Dai blast a large chunk of the ground and put the seed in there before burrowing it underground with his powers, he then grabbed a large knife to cut himself with. The human watched with amazement and flat interrogation but the other Ootsutsuki sighed, as the white blood of the man descended on the ground where the Shinju seed was, and much to his surprise, it already began to grown.

"I see ! This place has already seen deaths many time !"

"I hope that you know what you're doing, Dai. The Earth's atmosphere might be too dangerous for our enemy but leaving our homeworld like that is reckless, and what if, the country fall and all the clan die or do not remember about the Shinju ?"

Dai looked at them in an… eerie manner.

"They will."

Kaguya woke up in a forest, weakly breathing as she looked around : no guards armed to the teeth with swords and spears, no huge spiders and no psychopathic female leader, she did saw two figures, Mikazuchi and Tenpo, who were holding the corpses of some rabbits, she moaned a bit and attempt to get to her feet, doing it without efforts despite yesterday's conditions.

"Princess, you're awake !"

"Tenpo !"

She smiled warmly to him while Mikazuchi just dropped down the bunny, sighing in relief for a moment and even flashing a smile until she got all grim again, leaving Kaguya alone, even in an hiding place, was already a bad move, and her mental state could only worsen.

"What happened ?!"

"Shhhhhh…"

She pressed her fingers against Kaguya's soft lips, aware that the princess could be quite noisy, and noisiness was bad in their state, they were isolated on the woods, surviving mostly thanks to hunts, they weren't going to get out like this and yet, sneaking around the forest was dangerous as a group of three, especially because every soldier yearned to kill the famed princess, and last of the Ootsutsuki clan, and prove their superiority or something, they did not care about the fodders.

"We got out of the cave but soldiers were waiting for us outside, because of the sheer number of people, we were able to escape but you got…. Knocked out during the scuffle and we had to carry you around, our task was made much easier thanks to the mysterious deaths of soldier up ahead, we tried to steal the uniforms and weapons of some of them, however, it'll be extremely dangerous to walk around since even with an helmet, recognizing you is easy."

She turned around, the presence was on their side but they were worried at the thought of such a person lurking around, who was helping them so much ? How did he knew about the positions of the soldiers ? She feared that someone like this could turn against them, in fact, she saw a figure in the corner of her eyes, upon looking back, even if it was gone after the next second.

"I'm happy that you made it alive !"

Kaguya leaped to hug them both, despite the size difference between her and Tenpo, the female bodyguard herself groaned but hugged back, feeling that Kaguya needed one badly since the destruction of the castle and everything that happened after it, the princess smiled but then, frowned, before looking all sad again.

"And the others ? And… Tenshiro ?"

Tenshiro's name was muttered with fear and sadness, the Ootsutsuki queen knew full well what happened to him, and had no illusions concerning the fate of the young man, they were still afraid of delivering the news. Kaguya was a caring woman, born in the wrong era, and they kinda felt that she did not deserve to see anything that ever happened to her, not in the slightest. That said, Tenpo prepared himself.

"Princess, we're sorry to inform you that… well… Tenshiro was lost. We don't know what happened to him but its certain that he's unfortunately dead, we're sorry to break this information upon you in such a brutal way, I… we're sorry, the others also did not make it from what we saw, plenty scattered but I doubt that they made it, even if the mysterious benefactor probably helped."

Kaguya… stood, for a moment, she looked as if she was ready to spell out something but she quickly backed down, looking at her knees for a long moment before gripping her hands. The princess's facial expression were usually quite easy to spot but for now, her face was unreadable, she shut down for a moment, but they knew that she discovered a new emotion.

The princess thought, she was a joke of a ruler, too pathetic to save her lover, too pathetic to save her subjects, she was hit by rocks, made a fool of herself in front of Tenshiro and was humiliated by some barbarian, all of this because of the violent war between men, kingdoms who waged war, for what ? Just territory, all these innocent lives corrupted and destroyed because of land.

She felt anger, she already felt that way but this time, it was sheer hatred for all these rulers, the generals, the ruthless soldiers, she hated them, wanted to make them pay for what they've done to those she loved, those she was supposed to protect and plenty of innocents for the sake of land, and a single word rang in her ears.

Power.

She turned her head toward the Shinju, knowing exactly where it was even if their location was a bit underground. She felt connected to it, knowing which road to take, how to climb it and especially how to eat the fruit. In fact, she could see the fruit from up there, it wasn't a taboo to eat it anymore, the princess wasn't going to abide by the rules of this old, war-torn world.

"Good, queen Kaguya."

Kaguya suddenly got up to looks around, confused and panicked, and gasped when she saw Dai, standing right behind them, smiling quietly when he saw her, he was… monstrous at best, but she felt at home with him.

"You'll reign over them, you'll guide them trough perfection, this world will worship the Ootsutsuki again, it'll never know fear, pain, death and darkness under our reign, Am I right, queen ?"

"Yes ! I will stop all wars in existence, I swear it on my name ! No one will suffer any longer !"

He smiled and vanished… and three seconds after that, an horrible headache took over Kaguya, the thoughts of power soon silencing themselves as she felt, the bodyguards breaking her fall.

"Are you alright princess ?!"

The last Ootstsuki smiled and nodded.

"I'm better than I've ever been… anyway, let us eat ! I shall detail my plan later on !"

She pulled herself up and happily strolled over to the rabbits, much to the confusion of the bodyguards, the whole sequence was simply… bizarre for them, especially when she started to talk.

Because no one else was inside the hideout for the whole time.


End file.
